In South Asia’s increasingly water and food insecure economy, wetlands need to be repositioned as ‘natural infrastructure’ considering their role in ensuring food, water and energy security.
Fundamental to this is recognition of the inextricable linkages between wetland wise use and water management within sectoral policy and decision-making processes. As various projects implemented by us indicate, building just an allocation for wetlands in water resources planning is not sufficient. Integration can be meaningfully achieved only when wetland restoration and wise use is considered and more importantly invested upon as options for meeting water management objectives (for example reviving floodplains as a solution for buffering flood risk, or wetland restoration for enhancing groundwater recharge).