Wetlands, the ‘hotspot’ of biodiversity, are threatened by changes in land use/land cover, inappropriate water resources management and climate change. Despite increasing awareness of their ecosystem services, wetlands are not accounted into the development projects. This stems from the lack of capacity and the complexities in assessing the biodiversity of wetlands and linking it to various ecosystem services. We propose to build capacity of early career policy makers, natural resource managers and researchers to understand the value of wetland biodiversity and its linkages with their ecosystem services and to integrate the wetland concerns into land use and water resources projects. The project focuses on rapid assessment of biodiversity of wetlands and their ecosystem services in the Freshwater Ecoregions of Ganga-Brahmapautra basin and monitoring the impacts of global change on it.We also propose to develop a framework for rapid assessment of biodiversity and ecosystem services of major wetland types for their guidance.