Boletin de la Sede para el Estudio de los Humedales Mediterraneos , vol. This reprint restores some parts of the interview that had to be trimmed from the published version for reasons of space. The Ramsar Convention was adopted in 1971 and came into force in 1975. A full-time Bureau or Secretariat was only established by the Contracting Parties in 1988.
Wetlands are still the only ecosystem to have their own convention.
Before Ramsar there was no coordinating conception of this type. It should be emphasized that MedWet is not simply a project, but a broader long-term initiative. The MedWet initiative is an essential long term instrument, both at site level and in terms of policies, to respond to the threats to which they are exposed. At the 1993 Conference in Japan, the Contracting Parties called for the establishment of particular criteria for fish, and the 1996 Conference in Brisbane in 1996 approved fish criteria. The real importance of the new fish criteria is to show governments, especially those in developing countries, and especially in Africa, that Ramsar is not just a bird convention, but genuinely a wetland convention, with a concern for all aspects of wetlands, and in particular for the people who live in them.