We are losing one of our most powerful natural allies against climate change and yet, we are barely paying attention.
In the Americas, the effects of climate change are already being felt in the form of floods, droughts, storms, coastal erosion, and water insecurity. This week, as the London Climate Action Week focuses global attention on climate action, emissions will rightly be at the center of the debate. But adaptation, preparing for the impacts that are already occurring, deserves the same urgency. And one of our most effective tools for building resilience continues to be drained, degraded, and overlooked: our wetlands.
Wetlands are not peripheral ecosystems. They are frontline climate infrastructure, and we are dismantling them at an alarming rate. Although they cover just 6% of the Earth’s land surface, they have a far greater impact than their size suggests, storing between 20% and 35% of all terrestrial carbon. Peatlands alone store more carbon than all the world’s forests combined.
Wetlands also support biodiversity and human well-being on a large scale. Around 40% of plant and animal species live or breed in wetlands, but about a quarter are at risk of extinction. These ecosystems filter water, buffer floods and storms, sustain fisheries, and support the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people. Since 1970, the world has lost about 35% of its wetlands, a rate of loss faster than any other ecosystem.
This is not just a matter of conservation. It is a climate imperative.
When wetlands are degraded or drained, they don’t just stop storing carbon; they start releasing it. Drained peatlands alone emit around 2 billion tons of CO₂ a year, approximately 5% of global emissions caused by human activities.
Each hectare lost represents a double blow: it weakens a critical carbon sink and simultaneously accelerates the climate impacts that communities are already struggling to face. We are eroding a life support system on which we depend.
The missing links in the sky
For migratory birds, the consequences are immediate and visible.
Every year, billions of birds travel vast distances along routes known as migratory flyways, global aerial corridors that connect continents. If migratory flyways are superhighways for birds, wetlands are the service stations that make these journeys possible.
A shorebird traveling from the Arctic to Australia may cover tens of thousands of kilometers, but it cannot do so without stopping. It relies on a chain of healthy wetlands to rest, feed, and regain energy for the next leg of the journey.
Those links are breaking.
Climate change is intensifying droughts and reducing wetlands that have existed for millennia. At the same time, extreme rainfall can flood ecosystems so abruptly that they wash away the invertebrates on which birds depend for food. In a single season, a wetland can go from being dry to suffering destructive floods.
For migratory birds, finely adapted over thousands of years to stable conditions, this instability is devastating.
Take, for example, the bar-tailed godwit, which makes the longest known non-stop flight among birds, traveling up to 12,000 kilometers from Alaska to New Zealand. To complete this journey, it must double its body weight by feeding in intertidal wetlands, such as those in the Yellow Sea. If those habitats degrade, the birds simply do not survive the journey.
Unlike resident species, migratory birds face threats across entire continents: at their breeding sites, in their wintering areas, and at every stop along the way. Climate change is also altering migration timings, causing birds to arrive increasingly early or too late, missing the peaks of food availability.
The result is stark: birds are starving along migratory routes that once sustained them.
Solutions that work, when we invest in them
The good news is that we know how to fix this, and there is clear evidence that it works.
The critically endangered spoon-billed sandpiper faced a rapid collapse due to habitat loss. But since 2019, the protection of 16 coastal sites in China and South Korea, covering more than 400,000 hectares, has helped reduce its annual population decline rate from 26% to around 5%.
This demonstrates that when wetlands are protected at scale, species can recover.
But protection alone is not enough. Wetlands must be restored, managed, and conserved as connected networks along entire migratory flyways, not as isolated patches. This is the approach that BirdLife International promotes through its Global Flyways Programme and its Memorandum of Understanding with Wetlands International.
Achieving this requires governments, local communities, and financial institutions to align around a shared understanding: the conservation of wetlands is an investment in climate adaptation. Protecting an upstream floodplain protects a downstream city. Restoring a tidal flat can shield coastal communities from storms. These are measurable benefits.
However, wetlands remain largely absent from the climate finance flows needed to sustain them at scale.
There are signs of progress. BirdLife works with partners like the World Bank, the Development Bank of Latin America and the Caribbean (CAF), and the Asian Development Bank to implement large-scale wetland initiatives across the world’s four main migratory flyways.
On September 11, 2026, BirdLife International will convene its second Global Flyways Summit in Nairobi, bringing together governments, scientists, and conservation leaders. Wetlands will not be featured as a niche topic but as a central climate solution.
A decision we cannot ignore
The science is clear. The solutions are known. The cost of inaction is rising.
We can continue draining wetlands, accelerating emissions, and leaving hundreds of millions more people exposed to floods, droughts, and storms. Or we can recognize wetlands for what they are: some of the most effective and cost-efficient climate adaptation solutions on the planet.
This decision is already being made in policies, investments, and land-use decisions worldwide. Projects like the restoration of the Rocuant-Andalién wetland system in Chile show that investing in these ecosystems can be a concrete bet on adaptation and climate resilience.
If we do it right, future generations will continue to witness the annual return of migratory birds, from the flamingos that paint the lakes of East Africa pink to the ospreys that return each spring to the wetlands of the United Kingdom.
If we do it wrong, those journeys will end.
Wetlands are not optional in the fight against climate change. They are the missing piece. It’s time we treat them as such.
By: Megan Eldred, Senior Policy Manager, Sites, BirdLife International
