Wetlands International, the organization that has spent decades mapping and protecting the world's wetlands, has just launched an ambitious new strategy for 2026–35 that flips the script on how business treats these vital ecosystems. Instead of asking governments alone to save wetlands, the organization is betting that the private sector—the very force that often drives their destruction—can become their greatest ally.
The scale of what's at stake is staggering. Since 1970, the world has lost 22% of its remaining wetlands, and they continue to vanish at an alarming rate. For communities already living with floods, droughts, fires, and polluted water supplies, wetland decline isn't an abstract environmental concern—it's a daily crisis. Yet for decades, these landscapes were treated as wastelands, obstacles to development. Governments permitted their conversion into farmland and construction sites. Rivers were diverted. Coastal wetlands were replaced with concrete defenses. Peat was extracted and dams were built for hydropower. Businesses profited handsomely at each step, serving as architects, contractors, and financiers of these transformations.
But Wetlands International's new strategy rests on a radical reframing: what if businesses understood what they were actually destroying? The Global Wetland Outlook 2025 quantifies it with stunning precision. Remaining wetlands provide between US$7.98 trillion and US$39.01 trillion in benefits to people every year. They regulate water, sequester carbon, shelter biodiversity, and offer resilience to communities and cities alike. Those aren't environmental abstractions—they're the infrastructure on which profitable economies depend.
Sven Sielhorst, writing on behalf of Wetlands International, frames the challenge clearly: "By making wetland dependencies and impacts visible in business and finance, we can help unlock private sector action for a wetland-positive economy." The strategy calls for a sharp division of labor. Governments must lead through nature-inclusive land use planning and regulation that penalizes harm while incentivizing restoration. Businesses must cut their negative impacts on wetlands, harness their creative power to solve wetland-related problems, and support protection and restoration in the landscapes where they operate.
What sets this approach apart is its recognition that government action alone has never been sufficient to reverse global wetland decline. Wetlands International has decades of experience supporting governments through wetland mapping, monitoring, and policy support—work that remains essential. But the organization now argues, compellingly, that transformational change requires business strategies to become sustainable with no or minimal negative impact on wetlands.
This isn't naive optimism. The strategy aligns with recent IPBES reports calling for system-wide approaches to biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse. It acknowledges the deeper causes of environmental destruction and asks the private sector to confront them directly. The vision is clear: a world economy that operates within planetary boundaries, where business innovation and investment actively restore rather than deplete the ecosystems that sustain us all.
Wetlands International is inviting the private sector to lead this change—to become the architects and financiers not of destruction, but of restoration. For communities whose survival depends on healthy wetlands, that invitation couldn't come at a more critical moment.