World Wetlands Day 2026: Celebrating cultural heritage through wetlands

Celebrated each year on 2 February, World Wetlands Day highlights in 2026 the theme “Wetlands and traditional knowledge: Celebrating cultural heritage”, underscoring the deep and enduring connections between wetlands, people and culture.

Wetlands have long been places of human settlement, spirituality, craftsmanship and food production, shaped and safeguarded through generations of knowledge and practice. From river deltas and floodplains to mangroves, peatlands and coastal lagoons, these ecosystems are not only reservoirs of biodiversity but also living cultural landscapes, reflecting sustainable interactions between people and nature developed over time.

Many World Heritage properties are closely associated with wetlands, where cultural practices, belief systems and land-use traditions have evolved in response to water-based ecosystems. Cultural World Heritage sites such as historic cities, archaeological landscapes and sacred places often owe their origin and continued vitality to nearby wetlands that provide water, fertile soils, transport routes and natural protection.

Today, almost 120 World Heritage properties overlap wholly or partially with more than 170 wetlands recognised under the Ramsar Convention, with around one third of these properties inscribed for their cultural values.

The connections between cultural heritage and wetlands are clearly reflected at sites such as the Itsukushima Shinto Shrine in Japan, located within a coastal wetland environment recognised under the Ramsar Convention, where spiritual traditions, ritual practices and landscape design are closely linked to tidal rhythms. Venice and its Lagoon in Italy reflects centuries of human adaptation to a fragile lagoon environment, where wetlands have shaped architecture, livelihoods and cultural identity. Other sites, including the Budj Bim Cultural Landscape in Australia and the Saloum Delta in Senegal, demonstrate how wetland-based knowledge systems and water management practices continue to sustain cultural landscapes and living traditions.

Across World Heritage wetlands, such knowledge systems are embedded in living traditions, including water management techniques, fishing methods, agricultural practices and spiritual customs, that shape cultural identity while supporting sustainable interactions with wetland environments. Recognising wetlands as spaces of living heritage helps bridge cultural and natural approaches to conservation and affirms the role of Indigenous Peoples and local communities as custodians and knowledge holders whose experience and stewardship are essential for maintaining both ecological functions and cultural meanings.

The World Heritage Centre joins the Secretariat of the Ramsar Convention to celebrate World Wetlands Day and calls for enhanced synergies between cultural and natural heritage and recognising wetlands as places where culture, nature and water are deeply interconnected. Protecting wetlands at World Heritage sites means safeguarding not only ecosystems, but also cultural landscapes, living traditions and long-standing human-nature relationships that have shaped them over centuries.

By celebrating wetlands as cultural heritage, World Wetlands Day 2026 invites States Parties, site managers, communities and partners to reaffirm their commitment to conserving these vital ecosystems – for people, for culture and for future generations.

Learn more about our efforts to protect wetlands of global importance: here