World Wetlands Day 2026: Where Memory Meets Water — Why Indigenous Knowledge Matters for East Africa’s Wetlands

As the mist lifts over the papyrus wetlands of Lake Kyoga, elder Akot begins her morning walk along narrow channels shaped by generations before her. She knows which pools must rest this season, where fishing is forbidden until the rains return, and which reeds can be harvested without weakening the wetland. “These waters remember us,” she says quietly. “And we must remember them.”

On World Wetlands Day 2026, her words carry urgency. Across East Africa, wetlands sustain millions of lives — filtering water, buffering floods, providing water in dry spells, supporting fisheries, and anchoring cultural identity. Long before formal conservation laws, communities across Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi, Somalia, DR Congo and South Sudan managed wetlands through Indigenous knowledge systems rooted in observation, respect, and restraint.

Indeed, the 2026 World Wetlands Day theme ‘Wetlands and Traditional Knowledge: Celebrating Cultural Heritage’, highlights the important role of traditional and indigenous knowledge in wetland management and preserving cultural identity. It aims to encourage dialogue and understanding of the connection between wetlands and cultural practices.

Wetlands were not just resources; they were sacred landscapes. Taboos protected breeding grounds. Seasonal calendars governed fishing and grazing. Elders mediated access, ensuring equity and regeneration. These systems preserved biodiversity while reinforcing cultural values and social cohesion.

Today, that balance is under strain.

Pressures on Wetlands — and on Knowledge

Population growth, commercial agriculture, urban expansion, and infrastructure development are rapidly degrading wetlands. In many cases, formal planning frameworks override customary governance, treating wetlands as idle land rather than living systems. Climate change compounds the challenge, disrupting rainfall patterns that once guided seasonal practices.

Equally worrying is the erosion of cultural transmission. Younger generations, educated in systems that neither value nor put emphasis on Indigenous ecological knowledge, are losing connection to wetland stewardship traditions. As knowledge fades, so does the sense of responsibility that sustained wetlands for centuries.

Yet Indigenous knowledge remains deeply relevant. It is place-based, adaptive, and socially legitimate. In the Rufiji Delta, farmers still use flood timing knowledge to cultivate crops without draining wetlands. Around Lake Victoria, customary fishing norms among many tribes, like the Luo community in Kenya; Buganda and Busoga Kingdoms in Uganda — where respected — reduce overexploitation more effectively than enforcement alone. Fortunately, these institutions have unrelenting efforts to pass indigenous knowledge onto children and youths, despite the above pressures.

World Wetlands Day 2026: A Call to Act Differently

The future of East Africa’s wetlands depends on bridging Indigenous and scientific knowledge, not choosing between them. For planners, this requires moving from consultation to co-governance.

Policy Recommendations for National and Subnational Planners

§  Formally recognise Indigenous wetland governance systems
National laws and local ordinances should acknowledge customary rules, sacred sites, and cultural/traditional authorities as legitimate components of wetland management.

§  Embed Indigenous knowledge in planning and Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs)
Subnational planners should require development projects to document and integrate local ecological knowledge, not merely assess biophysical impacts.

§  Strengthen co-management frameworks
Wetland management committees should include elders, women, youth, and cultural/traditional leaders alongside technical officers, with real decision-making power.

§  Protect community land and wetland tenure
Secure land and resource rights are essential for long-term stewardship. Unclear tenure accelerates degradation and loss of the rich biodiversity that wetlands hold (a lot of which remains unknown to science todate).

§  Invest in knowledge transmission
Support community-led documentation, cultural education, and intergenerational learning programmes linked to schools and local institutions like the diverse cultural institutions across East Africa, youth and women groups, as well as religious institutions.

On this World Wetlands Day 2026, East Africa is reminded that wetlands are not empty spaces waiting to be ‘developed’ into human settlement areas, industrial zones or large-scale farming for rice and other crops. They are storied landscapes, shaped by memory, culture, and care. When planners listen to people like Akot — and design policies that respect what communities already know — wetlands can continue to sustain both nature and identity for generations to come.