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Rivers and Lakes – Resilient Communities

  • Community resilience
  • Rivers and lakes

By 2030, we aim to safeguard and restore 60 million hectares of wetlands as integral elements of productive river and lake landscapes.

To enable stakeholders in river and lake landscapes to sustain and improve their local economy, we need to reconcile agriculture, grazing and fishery management with wetland conservation and the maintenance or restoration of the natural water dynamics. To do this, we will work within river and lakes basins to enable inclusive and just governance of water and wetland resources and promote management practices which are harmonised with maintaining the resilience of the water and wetland systems.

In so doing we will create sustainable wetland economies that reinforce resilient, stable and socio-economically vibrant communities.

We are working to:

  • Communicate knowledge-based analyses of the relationship between human security and wetland condition, to inspire investment and action that seeks to safeguard and restore river and lake wetlands
  • Pilot local scale best practices for sustainable agricultural use of wetland natural resources
  • Strengthen the capacity of community groups and their networks, to enhance the voices and agency of vulnerable wetland communities in land and water governance and wetland management
  • Advocate for sustainable water resource and agricultural management practices in key policy and practice platforms
  • Participate in and enable coalitions that reduce and resolve local conflicts over wetland natural resources
  • Stimulate the development and financing of sustainable socio-economic plans that safeguard and enhance wetland economies, alongside wetland conservation and restoration, at the basin or landscape scale

This will result in joined up resilience of society and ecosystems, with wetland communities profiting from improved and regained benefits from wetlands and exerting greater control over their future management as part of wider socio-economic development.