Background

The continents of Europe and Asia (Eurasia) make up about one-third of the world’s land area, but the combined acreage of their coastal wetlands is less than in the much smaller Nearctic and Afrotropical landmasses (Ramsar, 2007). Coastal wetlands of both Europe and northern Asia belong to the Palearctic biogeographic province (see Figure 6.5). Eurasian temperate marshes therefore share many common characteristics, particularly large-scale anthropogenic alteration over thousands of years, beginning in the Middle East, Europe and China, which have been ancient centres of agriculture and the locations of first cities since about 9000 yr BP (Roberts, 1998; Riehl et al., 2013). In this temperate region, there are now only two major estuaries: the Rhine Estuary (Netherlands) and the Shatt al-Arab (Iraq); both are seriously endangered by rising global sea level and global warming trends. Further south in Eurasia, the tropical-subtropical wetlands lie in the Indo-Malayan and Polynesian sectors of the Oceanic biogeographic region. Here, ten vast, densely populated estuaries are under moderate to extreme threat of destruction from rising global sea level. The tectonically active Southeast Asian region on the western ‘Pacific Ring of Fire’ is further subject to frequent earthquakes and tsunamis, as well as intense river flooding during the monsoon rain season.