We are here Venice, Ensayos, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) Chile, and the Michael Succow Foundation, partner in the Greifswald Mire Centre, are pleased to announce the signing of The Venice Agreement during a historic assembly on June 2, 2022, World Peatlands Day.
The Venice Agreement represents a commitment by peatland custodians from around the world to change the trajectory of the ecological and cultural management of these wetland ecosystems towards effective conservation. By taking a bottom-up approach that recognizes local initiatives as key collaborators in the international process of peatland conservation, The Venice Agreement sets a new standard for the valuation and practice of protecting and restoring our planet’s peatlands at the local level.
The Venice Agreement values the fact that the well-being of people and peatlands are deeply connected, and that thoughtful, responsible, and accountable actions can protect and restore this unique relation for generations to come.
At the same time, the Agreement recognizes specific needs to achieve effective peatland protection. Therefore, it is essential to create: an active local-to-global coordination, multi-layered collaboration, immediate and effective protection of healthy peatlands, and a new framework for recognition of the cultural, spiritual, and ancestral value of peatlands. Meaningful resources are necessary to protect and restore peatlands through innovative solutions. As Dr. Bárbara Saavedra emphasizes, “The Venice Agreement invites us to dissolve the cultural, financial, and social barriers, and to assume the evident ecological fact that we all depend on nature, and the ethical and practical need to care for peatlands,” because, as Reverend Houston Cypress (who calls the peatlands of the greater Everglades home) cited during the closing ceremony, “…peatlands are ancestors.”
To download and print The Venice Agreement click here.
