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GlobWetland II partnership

The GlobWetland II project will develop the G-WOS pilot project in a regional context through a close partnership with the MedWet Secretariat and its Mediterranean Wetlands Observatory (MWO) hosted by the Tour du Valat (TdV), with the Ramsar Scientific and Technical Review Panel (STRP), and with the Ramsar National Focal Points (NFP) and supporting conservation agencies of the countries involved in the project.

The Tour du Valat will act as the user federator of the GlobWetland II project and will liaise with all other partner organisations. The participation of other organisations to the GlobWetland II project, such as inter-governmental environmental organisations, international environmental and conservation NGOs, and partnerships of conservation organisations will also be solicited during the course of the project.

The GlobWetland II project is intended to serve the needs of many wetland conservation practitioners from the wetlands managers up to the stakeholders of the Ramsar Convention. The targeted user communities of the project are the Ramsar Administrative Authorities and National Focal Points of the subject countries and their supporting conservation agencies, the MedWet partnership and its MWO, the international organisations member of the Ramsar STRP, inter-governmental environmental organisations, international environmental and conservation NPOs/NGOs, and partnerships of conservation organisations.
 

The Partner organisations will provide the following contribution to the GlobWetland II project:

  • The Tour du Valat, as host of the MWO coordination unit, will act as the user federator of the project and will liaise with all the Ramsar/MedWet National Focal Points of the participating countries.
  •  The Ramsar STRP will ensure that the GlobWetland II project is well in line with the objectives of the Ramsar Convention and the Global Wetland Observing System (G-WOS). The GW-II project shall also respond to the specific needs of the Convention to have some Ramsar Indicators of effectiveness.
  • The European Environment Agency (ESA) will bring its expertise in Land Cover Land Use mapping for the product "Inventory of Wetlands", one of the GW-II demonstration products to be produced at 1:100,000 scale and with the wetland classification of the Corine Land Cover (CLC).

The User organisations, i.e. the Ramsar/MedWet National Focal Points, have been con-tacted to participate to the project and to contribute by undertaking a certain number of tasks:
 

  • Advising the project team in the consolidation of the user requirements during the initial phase of the project (e.g. definition of important wetland locations, legends for the map production, change mapping and indicator calculation, software and training requirements by answering questionnaires);
  • Facilitating access to existing data (e.g., wetlands inventory, in-situ data on the selected sites, field surveys) that may be useful for the project;
  • Contributing to the validation of the wetland geo-information maps and indicators, at the mid-term and final reviews;
  • Attending the training on the GlobWetland II Information System, should the system be installed in their organisation, or in a partner agency, and testing the system software.
  • Performing an evaluation (assessment of the usabilty and quality) of the delivered products (wetland geo-information maps and indicators) and software;
  • Attending the 2 project workshop at the mid-term and final reviews;
     

ESA will provide through GlobWetland II the partner and user organisations with a free and unrestricted access to the project documentation, to the final wetland geo-information products (maps and indicators) and to the GlobWetland II information software (if requested by the partner organisations). The partner and user organisations, on their side, should provide some inkind contribution to the project distributed in manpower resources to support some project tasks, in access to data (e.g. ancillary and validation data) and in access to relevant background documentation (e.g. existing wetland inventory). The partner and user organisations should also act as facilitators for the GlobWetland II project team to liaise with their supporting conservation agencies.
The collaboration between ESA and the partner and user organisations does not imply any exchange of economic resources between the parties except for a financial support to the regional and national experts for specific project related activities, which will be directly managed by the Contractor.

The generation of the GlobWetland II products will require the best use of the local knowledge in the production process. The European Space Agency has therefore earmarked, as part of the project overall budget, some financial provisions, to support financially the participation of national and regional wetland experts to the production and validation phases, for their respective geographical areas of knowledge (maximum one expert per country).

The Ramsar Administrative Authorities from each participating country has been requested to designate an expert who will participate, together with the Contractor, to the production and validation of the GlobWetland II geo-information maps and indicators over the wetlands selected for their respective countries. Regional experts may also be designated, should the Ramsar NFPs decide to join their efforts and work in a coordinated manner. The designation of the national or regional experts will be finalised at the time of the project kick-off.
 

The baseline is to allocate the user budget to the following experts:

  • the regional wetland expert of the Mediterranean Wetlands Observatory, who will coordinate the participation of the national experts from the Contracting Parties;
  • the national experts from the Contracting Parties.