You learn something every day. Let me introduce you to RAMSAR

For the past four years, I have chaired a body – currently called the Customer Panel – for a company called South East Water.  The operation and regulation of the water sector is incredibly complicated with lots of specialist terminology and a great many acronyms.

This week, we had a meeting at which we focused especially on environmental issues. We learned that some 44% of the area covered by South East Water lies within landscape which has some kind of environmental designation. The national average is 24%.

So there are 144 SSSIs which are Sites of Special of Special Scientific Interest – a designation I know. But the paper before us mentioned five RAMSAR sites and this was an acronym that was totally new to me.

A quick search on Google revealed that RAMSAR is not actually an acronym but a place – a town in Iran where in 1971 there was agreement on the Ramsar Convention (formally, the Convention on Wetlands of International Importance, especially as Waterfowl Habitat).

You learn something every day …


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