Under the Ramsar Convention, the Bolivian government designated three new wetlands to be a protected area in the ‘Llanos of Moxos’, a vast region in the Beni province that is now the largest protected wetland in the world.

Positive News explains that this protected area represents “the combined size of the Netherlands and Belgium.”

The Ramsar Convention is formally known as the Convention on Wetlands (Ramsar, Iran, 1971). It is defined as:

[...] an intergovernmental treaty that embodies the commitments of its member countries to maintain the ecological character of their Wetlands of International Importance and to plan for the “wise use”, or sustainable use, of all of the wetlands in their territories.

Unlike the other global environmental conventions, Ramsar is not affiliated with the United Nations system of Multilateral Environmental Agreements.