EDITORIAL

"If you think you are too small to be effective, you have never slept with as mosquito."

While our northern hemisphere membership is enjoying the field season, IMCG itself is growing in numbers and effectiveness. This newsletter reports on recent developments, achievements, and set- backs in international mire conservation. One of the set-backs is the current limited attention of Ramsar for peatland priorities, in a time when more and more people become aware of how these wonderful landscapes connect globally burning issues of climate change, poverty, biodiversity, water scarcity, and desertification.

The Ramsar meeting in Kampala (Uganda) will be one of the places where IMCG will be actively present, with a side-event, an excursion, and new promotion material. After Kampala, we will focus on Tierra del Fuego (Argentina), where the November symposium has attracted so much attention, that the excursion places are already booked out.

With this Newsletter the registration is opened for the IMCG Field Symposium and General Assembly in Finland 2006. If you are interested, please register as soon as possible, but not later than 30th September 2005. We will get ample opportunity there to discuss the issue of burning peat that Finland still considers as a renewable fuel. This in contrast to the World Bank, that takes the opposite point of view, see this Newsletter! Also ecolabeling of peat is hotly debated in the European Union and this Newsletter reports on the latest developments.

As always the newsletter contains a variety of peatland news from all over the world, a presentation of recent new literature, and an overview of relevant future congresses and conferences. Please send all your proposals, discussion contributions, news, publications, etc. to us, and with your help we will again prepare an interesting Newsletter. Deadline for the next Newsletter is 18 September 2005.

For information or other things, contact us at the IMCG Secretariat. Address updates should be sent to Jan Sliva (sliva@wzw.tum.de). In the meantime, keep an eye on the continuously refreshed and refreshing IMCG web-site: http://www.imcg.net