Safeguarding Rivers and Lakes
Safeguarding and restoring healthy, resilient freshwater systems is key to achieving global goals for water, food, climate change, nature and sustainable development. But rivers and lakes are among the most threatened ecosystems. The 85% collapse in freshwater species populations since 1970 is the clearest sign of the damage we have done – and are still doing – to our rivers, lakes and other freshwater ecosystems.
Most long rivers across the world are dammed and cut off from their natural floodplains. Only a third still flow freely. The fragmentation and loss of rivers, lakes and floodplains is a result of ill-advised dams, irrigation schemes and other infrastructure projects that abstract, or remove water, changing the volume, speed and quality of water that flows through the ecosystem. Such changes can have disastrous consequences up and downstream. Climate change is exacerbating the challenges.
Our work on rivers and lakes
The pressures on freshwater wetlands are regional and global but can only be solved locally at the basin and ecosystem levels. We focus our work to scale up freshwater wetland conservation and restoration in river and lake landscapes across some of the most iconic and threatened freshwater systems in the world.
These include the Inner Niger Delta, Parana-Paraguay and Ganges rivers and wetlands, the Great Lakes Region of the Nile Basin, and high altitude wetlands of the Andes and Himalayas. Building on our track record and achievements in these places we seek to influence and enable global and regional socio-economic development actors such as the regional development banks and national governments through their commitments to implementing Agenda 2030 and NDCs.