Which of the following statements is/are correct ? 1. India is a signatory to the Ramsar Convention. 2. The Ramsar Convention is about wetland conservation. 3. At present there are 76 Ramsar Sites in India. Select the correct answer using the code given below :

Correct — D, (d) 1 and 2 only. Take the statements one at a time. Statement 1 holds: India is a Contracting Party to the Ramsar Convention, having joined it on 1 February 1982, and the country's first two sites — Chilika Lake in Odisha and the Keoladeo National Park in Rajasthan — were designated in October 1981 in anticipation of that membership. Statement 2 holds as well, and is the plainest of the three: the Convention on Wetlands, signed at the Iranian town of Ramsar on 2 February 1971 and in force since 1975, is the intergovernmental treaty devoted to the conservation and wise use of wetlands, originally framed around their value as waterfowl habitat and since broadened to wetlands of every kind — lakes, rivers, marshes, peatlands, mangroves, coral reefs, and man-made wetlands such as reservoirs and salt pans. Its anniversary is observed each year as World Wetlands Day. Statement 3 is the one the key rejects, and it fails on the number rather than on the idea. India's list of Ramsar sites was nowhere near seventy-six when this paper was set: the country had 37 sites at the end of 2019 and 42 at the end of 2020. The tally crossed seventy-five only in June 2022, and reached seventy-six in February 2023 — after this paper. The wider lesson is worth more than the arithmetic: India's Ramsar list has been growing quickly for several years and now stands above one hundred sites, the largest number in Asia and among the largest in the world, so any statement of the form 'at present there are N Ramsar sites' has a shelf life measured in months and must be judged against the year of the paper.

Why the others are wrong

• (a)2 and 3 only — Keeps the count and drops India's membership, which is the wrong way round on both. India has been a Contracting Party since 1982, so statement 1 is sound and cannot be excluded; and statement 3's figure of seventy-six did not describe India's list at the time of this paper. An option that rejects the most securely established of the three statements is generally the one to eliminate first. India joined the Convention in 1982, one of the earlier Asian parties to do so, and the two sites it named in October 1981 are still on the list; membership of this kind does not lapse or require renewal, so statement 1 is as safe a fact as the year of the treaty itself.
• (b)1, 2 and 3 — The tempting option, because statements 1 and 2 are both true and the third looks like the kind of figure that ought to be true. It was not, when this question was set. India's Ramsar list stood in the forties then, and the number seventy-six belongs to a later stage of a list that has since gone past a hundred. A statement-list item that turns on a single count is really a question about which year the paper belongs to. The growth is worth carrying as a sequence rather than as a single number: 37 sites at the end of 2019, 42 at the end of 2020, 75 by June 2022, 76 in February 2023, and past a hundred by the middle of this decade. Set against that sequence, the figure printed here belongs to a year later than the paper.
• (c)1 only — Correctly accepts India's membership but throws away the description of what the Convention is for, and statement 2 is the least contestable claim on the page: Ramsar is the wetlands treaty, adopted at Ramsar in 1971 and devoted to the conservation and wise use of wetlands and their resources. Rejecting it would leave the Convention with no subject at all. Statement 2 is also the statement that carries the Convention's substance, since its central obligation is not merely to list wetlands but to maintain the ecological character of listed sites and to make wise use of all wetlands in a party's territory, whether listed or not.

The Ramsar Convention on Wetlands is one of the oldest of the modern multilateral environmental agreements, adopted in 1971 and in force from 1975, and it is unusual in being devoted to a single ecosystem type rather than to a species group or a pollutant. Its work rests on three commitments by each party: to designate at least one wetland for the List of Wetlands of International Importance and maintain its ecological character, to use all wetlands in its territory wisely, and to cooperate internationally over transboundary wetlands and shared species. A wetland qualifies for the list under nine criteria covering representative or unique wetland types, threatened species and ecological communities, biological diversity, waterbird numbers — the well-known thresholds of twenty thousand waterbirds or one per cent of a population — and fish and other fauna. Where a listed site's ecological character is threatened by pollution, development or other interference, it may be placed on the Montreux Record; in India, Loktak Lake in Manipur and Keoladeo National Park in Rajasthan have been on that record, while Chilika was removed from it after restoration work. Designation is made by the national government through the Ramsar Secretariat and does not by itself create any new legal protection in Indian law; that comes from the Wetlands (Conservation and Management) Rules of 2017 under the Environment (Protection) Act, and from whatever wildlife or forest law already applies to the site. India's list includes the Sundarban Wetland, the largest, along with Chilika, Keoladeo, Loktak, Wular, Kolleru, Kanwar and many smaller sanctuaries and reservoirs.

Key facts

• The Convention on Wetlands was adopted at Ramsar, Iran, on 2 February 1971 and came into force in 1975; its anniversary is World Wetlands Day.
• India became a Contracting Party on 1 February 1982; papers usually describe this as India being a signatory to the Convention.
• India's first Ramsar sites were Chilika Lake in Odisha and Keoladeo National Park in Rajasthan, designated in October 1981.
• The Convention covers the conservation and wise use of all wetlands — lakes, rivers, marshes, peatlands, mangroves, coral reefs and man-made wetlands.
• India had 37 Ramsar sites at the end of 2019 and 42 at the end of 2020; the list crossed 75 in June 2022 and reached 76 in February 2023.
• India's Ramsar list has since grown past one hundred sites, the largest number in Asia and among the largest in the world.
• The Montreux Record lists sites whose ecological character is threatened; Loktak Lake and Keoladeo National Park have been on it, and Chilika was removed after restoration.
• Ramsar designation confers international recognition but no protection of its own in Indian law; that comes from the Wetlands (Conservation and Management) Rules, 2017 and from existing wildlife and forest legislation.

Common traps

• Accepting a count of anything as current without asking which year the paper belongs to. Site totals, ranks and index scores all move.
• Confusing Ramsar with other conventions. Ramsar is wetlands; CITES is trade in endangered species; Bonn is migratory species; Basel is hazardous waste.
• Assuming Ramsar designation gives a site legal protection by itself. It is an international listing, and Indian protection comes from domestic rules and existing law.
• Placing the Convention's adoption in the wrong decade or country; it was signed at Ramsar in Iran in 1971.
• Mixing up the Montreux Record with the Ramsar List. The first is a subset of the second, for sites under threat.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which one of the following pairs of wetlands were the first sites in India to be designated under the Ramsar Convention ?

  • (a)Loktak Lake and Wular Lake
  • (b)Chilika Lake and Keoladeo National Park
  • (c)Sambhar Lake and Kolleru Lake
  • (d)Sundarban Wetland and Bhitarkanika Mangroves

  Answer(b) Chilika Lake and Keoladeo National Park

• practice — not a real PYQ

  A Ramsar site whose ecological character has changed or is likely to change on account of pollution or other human interference is placed on which one of the following ?

  • (a)The Montreux Record
  • (b)The Red List
  • (c)Appendix I of CITES
  • (d)The World Heritage List in Danger

  Answer(a) The Montreux Record