Over two weeks, the GWW team held meetings in New South Wales, Queensland, and the Australian Capital Territory, and connected virtually with partners in Western and South Australia. Engagements included a multistakeholder dialogue in Canberra with CSIRO, Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water (DCCEEW), and Geoscience Australia; 1:1 meeting with the International River Foundation and the Nature Conservancy in Brisbane, as well as full day dialogue with the Global Ecology Lab at James Cook University (Townsville) leading the development of the Global Ecosystems Atlas). 

Key Observations: 

• • Data Decentralization and Diversity – there is varied and locally informed approaches to wetland data management  

• • Opportunities for Harmonization – there is strong stakeholder interest in exploring a nationally harmonized wetland inventory. 

• • Technical and Institutional considerations – there is a need to balance regional ecological diversity and varying institutional capacities, while integrating robust data, opens standards, and local knowledge. 

Collaboration was another central focus. The Global Wetland Watch explored synergies with the Global Ecosystems Atlas, a flagship project of the Group on Earth Observations (GEO), and discussed how Earth observation tools, open data, and shared scientific frameworks like the IUCN Global Ecosystem Typology could be leveraged to maximize impact. 

You can read more about what was learned and why Australia is such a vital testing ground for global monitoring, in the full article here.