The 11th Conference of the Parties of the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands was held in Bucharest, Romania, 6–13 July 2012. The theme of the conference was ‘Wetlands: home and destination’. The Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, signed in Ramsar, Iran, in 1971, is an intergovernmental treaty that provides the political framework for international cooperation for the preservation and sustainable development of wetlands of international importance. There are 162 countries that have endorsed the Convention, with 2040 wetland sites covering a total of 193 million hectares.