ANNUAL MEETING The Annual Meeting, held from 31 October to 4 of November 2022 in Tour du Valat, France, was the first opportunity for senior leaders and Heads of Offices to meet face-to-face since the last in-person Annual Meeting in Brazil three years ago, before the Covid pandemic. Tour du Valat hosting the Annual Meeting was symbolic due to its connection with the International Waterfowl and Wetlands Bureau (predecessor of Wetlands International) and its role in promoting the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands. Wetlands International has grown significantly in the last three years and the Annual Meeting was an opportunity to sharpen our priorities and deep dive into our upscaling ambitions to further accelerate our impact. We looked into how best to deliver our strategic goals and mechanisms for scaling up, such as sharing science and knowledge, stimulating public and private funding, working with value chains, building capacity, and influencing policy. On the last day of the Annual Meeting, the CEO and Heads of Offices met as the Global Board to confirm the key decisions and actions of the meeting. It set the basis for resetting our Business Planning process, defined a pathway to work on our scaling strategy, helped us understand how far along the way we are toward the achievement of the nine goals within our strategic intent and set minimum standards for our organisational development and financial exchange of information and reporting.
Delegation of Wetlands International at UN Biodiversity Conference COP15 in Montreal, Canada
We sent a delegation to Montreal to influence the UN Biodiversity negotiations at CBD COP15. The inclusion of inland waters and coastal ecosystems in the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework targets on restoration and conservation represents a big win for wetlands, and now provides a global mandate for urgent action for wetlands in every country. Partnerships and Philanthropy In 2022 we created a new network team to drive our work on partnerships, philanthropy and general fundraising. The team conducted a comprehensive audit of our fundraising needs which helped us identify areas of strength, weakness and opportunities for growth which will guide our priorities in the coming period. As one of the main conclusions, we decided to improve our coordination as a network to engage effectively with the private sector. We developed a corporate engagement strategy to align with our future ambitions and market readiness. Governance Wetlands International is a non-profit organisation with charitable status in the Netherlands and in countries where it operates. The organisation has two complementary forms of international governance: an Association of Members (governments and NGOs), and a foundation overseen by a Supervisory Council (SC) whose members also constitute the Board of the Association (BoA). The SC and BoA met three
times in 2022 and made a field visit to learn about peatland restoration in Scotland. A report of governance activities is presented in the Supervisory Council chapter. In cases where Wetlands International offices have an independent legal status, they are governed by their own boards and the organisation’s CEO is an ex-officio member. Network management The Global Board, consisting of the Wetlands International CEO and Heads of each office, is responsible for strategic decisions on positioning, priorities and institutional issues. The Global Board delegates operational decision-making to the Network Management Team which has members drawn from among Heads of office and global functions. In 2022, the Network Management Team met every two months and was key in decision-making in network-wide policy and communications issues (such as positioning on Voluntary Carbon Markets, engagement strategies for Ramsar, UNFCCC and CBD), and supervised investments made in organisational development, such as capacity building in Project Cycle Management and the Corporate Engagement Strategy. The Global Board met in November in the Camargue, France as part of the organisation’s Annual Meeting, where everyone there signed the Heads of Office Charter. Accountability Transparency and accountability towards our stakeholders are part of our core values, including actively seeking feedback
Workshop at the Annual meeting in Tour du Valat, France
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Wetlands International Annual Review 2022
Wetlands International Annual Review 2022
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