disappearance of wetlands around the world is contributing to the hydrological
extremes of droughts and floods.
These are among the many good reasons that telecommunications and
technology company Nokia is funding community-driven wetland conservation
programs in Bangalore. One more reason: Bangalore is home to one of Nokia’s
four global research and development centers. To the rest of the world, Bangalore
is India’s Silicon Valley, but to its tech-savvy citizens, Bangalore is a place skating
dangerously close to Day Zero — the day water runs out.
Nokia is helping restore wetlands in the Bangalore Rural District in
partnership with the district government, local panchayats (village councils),
small businesses, and the WWF. The WWF reports that the Nokia-sponsored
Bashettihalli wetland in India has reestablished connections with upstream
wetlands thanks to rigorous data gathering and analysis, mapping of less disruptive
supply chains, and improved water management practices at the basin level.
HSBC’s water program, to which the global bank has contributed $150
million over the past eight years, also focuses on wetlands, including the world’s
largest one: South America’s Pantanal. The Pantanal garnered the world’s
attention recently when massive wildfires hit it, close on the heels of the Amazon
forest fires in Brazil. But millions of people who live in the Paraguay River basin
were already acutely aware of how dams, deforestation, and agriculture have
put the Pantanal ecosystem under severe stress. The eight-year-old Pantanal
Pact, whose participants include 25 municipalities, local and international
nongovernmental organizations and businesses, and civil society, has been
working to improve watershed management through conservation measures
and advocacy in the region.
The benefits of rejuvenating wetlands are many; their vegetation captures
carbon and acts as a natural buffer to climate change — which is widely accepted
as a phenomenon that’s exacerbating water scarcity. A global pledge to protect
wetlands, called the Ramsar Convention, has been in force since 1975, but
meaningful action has been slow. Rejuvenating wetlands has business benefits,
too. Improved watershed management will make water-stressed environments
where companies operate more resilient. As businesses get behind these efforts,
protecting and restoring wetlands could become a mainstream endeavor.52
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