Three of India's wetlands of international importance lie in Kerala, and all three are in the south of the State

Background

River revival drives are being taken up district by district in Kerala, so it helps to know which of the State's water bodies already carry international protection. India now has 103 Ramsar Sites, the figure having reached 103 on 15 October 2026. Three of them are in Kerala: the Ashtamudi Wetland, estuarine backwaters with fisheries and mangroves; Sasthamkotta Lake, a spring-fed freshwater lake used for drinking water; and the Vembanad-Kol Wetland, the largest brackish wetland on the southwest coast. The listing comes from the Convention on Wetlands, adopted at Ramsar in Iran on 2 February 1971 and in force from 1975. In India the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change coordinates approval of a site and forwards the proposal to the Ramsar Secretariat. Amrit Dharohar promotes the conservation values of the country's Ramsar Sites. The National Plan for Conservation of Aquatic Ecosystems merged the separate national programmes for lake and wetland conservation into a single scheme.