Wetlands are important water-related ecosystems, providing a number of services to human societies, such as flood control, water storage and purification, climate control, and development opportunities including fisheries, agriculture, tourism, and many others.

Sustainable development depends on the knowledge of decision makers about the existence of environmental resources in any region. By securing the provision of easy-to-use knowledge on the ecosystems and the functions and services they provide to society, as well as the needs they have for appropriate management through long-term planning, decision makers can address priority issues so that a long term viability of the ecosystems can be secured, coupled with the sustainable generation of income and employment for local people.

The Mediterranean Wetlands Initiative of the Ramsar Convention (MedWet), as a permanent network of collaboration and provision of scientific knowledge to all Mediterranean countries has launched the MedWet/CODDE project under the INTERREG IIIC programme, in order to provide regions with a tool that will support decision making on regional development activities, based on the knowledge of how many water related ecosystems exist in their territory, and which are the benefits they provide to people and the pressures they need to be protected from.

Four Mediterranean based organisations active in science based wetland management that form part of the MedWet network will exchange knowledge with Estonia based Tartu University to build on and advance the existing MedWet inventory method, focusing on the use of modern technology information tools such as remote sensing, web databases and GIS. Their collaboration will result in a web based information system for easy storage, retrieval, and processing of wetland data on the location, ecological characteristics and socio-economic importance of water related ecosystems.