WWF - Resources - Rivers, Lakes & Wetlands

Advanced river flow management vital to facing climate challenge

2009-08-16

Stockholm, Sweden: Improved river flow management will be vital to protecting communities from the worst impacts of climate change and to achieving international goals on poverty reduction, according to a new report issued on the eve of World Water Week.

Securing Water for Ecosystems and Human Well-being: The Importance of Environmental Flows also finds that river flow management to meet diverse environmental and human needs should be funded through appropriate valuation of the ecosystem services provided by healthy rivers. These include maintenance of groundwater levels, flood and drought mitigation, and contributions to human livelihoods, nutrition and health.

The report, developed in collaboration between major global institutions including Water Week organizer the Stockholm International Water Institute, Swedish Water House, UNESCO-IHE, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), UNEP- DHI, Deltares and NGOs such as WWF, Conservation International and The Nature Conservancy, draws on the latest research and practices on environmental flows and their significance.

“Initially the emphasis in environmental flows was on the amount of water released down rivers,” said one of the report’s lead authors, Dr Birgitta Malm Renöfält, Cluster group leader at Swedish Water House.

“Now we recognize the importance of different flow levels and the timing of flows to different river functions and understand that maintaining a healthy functioning ecosystem requires much more sophisticated river management.

“For example, base flows are vital to surrounding water table levels and soil moisture levels, pulse flows shape the character or river channels and large floods replenish nutrients and recharge aquifers over wider areas.”

The report documents sensitive infrastructure development and operation and appropriate environmental flow management benefits for health and earnings in Kenya and Tanzania, Cambodia, China, Colombia, Iran and the Sudan.

With water availability expected to be one of the major and most severe impacts of climate change in many areas of the world, sufficient and equitable allocation of water will become more and more vital for both people and nature.

“The environmental community has critical tools to offer for climate change adaptation, and environmental flow regulation is an important part of the climate adaptation toolbox,” said Dr Mark Smith, Head, IUCN Water Programme.

Note: Further information on this report will be available at the Swedish Water House Cluster group booth at World Water Week, at EH 0310, Stockholm International Fairs on 17.45 CET on 16 August 2009.

For further information contact:

SIWI/SWH: Josh Paglia, josh.paglia@siwi.org, +4673914 39 96
WWF: Phil Dickie, pdickie@wwfint.org, +41797031952
UNESCO-IHE: Lara Kwak, l.kwak@unesco-ihe.org +31152151710
UNEP-DHI: Louise Korsgaard, lok@dhigroup.com, +4540544774,
Deltares: Karen Meijer, Karen.Meijer@deltares.nl, +31 15 2858537
The Nature Conservancy: Cristina Mestre, cmestre@tnc.org mobile: +1703 841-8779 work: +17036785639
Conservation International (CI): Rob McNeil, rmcneil@conservation.org mobile: +1571 232 0455 work+1703 341 2561
IUCN: Claire Warmenbol claire.warmenbol@iucn.org mobile: +41 79 404 1973

River managers plan a bleak water future for Europe

2009-05-29

Brussels, Belgium: An ambitious European scheme to fix and safeguard its rivers and secure its water future is at risk of being undermined by poor and inadequate plans for water management prepared by EU countries, a new study by WWF and European Environment Bureau (EEB) has found.

The analysis has found none of the draft plans rates well across a range of water safety, conservation and management measures.

"The European Water Framework Directive when adopted in 2000 was far from perfect but it had the makings of a world-leading vision to change the ways we manage, use and value water at a time when the worlds water future looked much more secure than it does today ," said Sergey Moroz, Water Policy Officer at WWF.

Despite increasing water challenges exacerbated by climate change, draft plans developed so far by Member States are generally putting off major and necessary decisions, providing few mechanisms and little funding to achieve good status for water bodies.

"in the interests of agriculture and industry to become less vulnerable"

"These plans dont create an impression that we are finally departing from the unsustainable practices that led us to the current water crisis," said Pieter de Pous, EEB Water Policy Officer." For example, it is in the interests of agriculture and industry to become less vulnerable to increasingly insecure water supplies but there is very little in the plans when it comes to reducing their water consumption."

What future for EUs water? expresses particular concerns with increasingly water scarce Italy and Greece where it is unclear whether they are actually planning to finalise plans even remotely comparable to what the rest of Europe is doing.

Some countries like the Netherlands that have lost much of their natural rivers and waters in the past, are now starting initiatives to give rivers more space for flooding and thus improving their ability to face future climate change impacts. The Netherlands also managed to secure funding for river restoration, although the amounts are still inadequate.

Worrying diverging trends now emerge from Eastern and Southern Europe, like in Czech Republic and Portugal, where rivers continue to be poured into concrete straightjackets for the purpose of navigation, flood defence or hydropower, said de Pous.

In Portugal up to 10 new dams for hydropower are currently proposed for construction without any adequate consideration of the likelihood that there may not be enough water to run them.

"need to be visionary to tackle lasting food and energy security, public health and climate challenges"

Water pollution remains a serious issue also not sufficiently addressed in the majority of plans and large portions of Europes waters remain at risk of becoming unavailable or in need of expensive treatment.

Water efficiency measures were particularly poor in most draft plans. A partial exception was France's Loire Bretagne basin where a water efficiency objective is proposed for drinking water supply for rural and urban areas.

"To tackle Europes water challenges, Member States plans need to be visionary, abandoning a minimalist approach to implementation and becoming the central plank of efforts to tackle lasting food and energy security, public health and climate challenges," said Moroz.

Public consultation on the draft river plans is set to close at the end of June. EU Member States will have to finalise their water plans by the end of the year and send them to the European Commission.

Improving sugarcane cultivation in India

2009-05-01

Scarcity of freshwater is affecting the productivity and profitability of sugarcane growers and millers in India.

As many as 35 million farmers in this country grow sugarcane and rely on it for their livelihoods. Another 50 million depend on employment generated by the 571 sugar factories and other related industries using sugar. In Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Tamil Nadu, sugarcane plays a major role in the state economy.

During the last 10 years, sugarcane production in India has fluctuated between 233 million tonnes and 355 million tonnes per year. Similarly, the productivity at the farm level is as low as 40 tonnes/ha. With such low yields and fluctuations in production, and predicted increases in the variability of rainfall due to climate change, the industry is in for big trouble.

One of the world's thirstiest crops, approximately 25,000 kg of water is needed to produce 100 kg of sugarcane. Unless sugarcane farmers are introduced to new methods for producing higher yields using much less water, the country will find it difficult to meet the growing demand for sugar.

The Sustainable Sugarcane Initiative (SSI) aims to:

provide practical options to farmers for improving the productivity of land, water, and labour
reduce crop duration, providing factories a longer crushing season and increased employment opportunities for workers
reduce the overall pressure on water resources and ecosystems.

The SSI is a package of practices based on the principles of ‘more with less’ in agriculture. It stresses a practical approach that originates from farmers and civil society to improve productivity while reducing pressures on natural resources.

It's estimated that by adopting SSI, a farmer will be able to produce at least 20% more sugarcane while reducing water inputs by 30% and chemical inputs by 25%.

Amur-Heilong River Basin

2008-11-17

Land area and water volume alone are not enough to make a river basin famous.

Several globally recognized names rank among the world’s largest river basins and even some smaller basins enjoy global notoriety. The Amazon, Congo, Mississippi, and Nile are widely known as the world’s largest river basins, but the Yangzi (or Yangtze or Changjiang), Indus, Ganges, and Mekong also make headlines around the world nearly every year.

The former 4 are all larger than the Amur-Heilong; the latter 4 all smaller. The Ganges and Mekong basins each cover less than half the area of the Amur-Heilong.

So why is the Amur-Heilong, 11th largest river basin in the world and the longest free-flowing river in the Eastern Hemisphere, so little known and appreciated outside its own catchment?

Rivers that affect the most people are in many cases the best known. This is true for many of the world’s largest rivers, particularly those in South and East Asia, where human population densities are generally high. The Indus, Ganges, Yangzi, and Yellow Rivers for example provide water to hundreds of millions of people for domestic use, industry, transport and farming.

The Indus and Ganges basins combined support around 750 million people;
the Yangzi and Yellow River basins together support nearly 600 million.
In contrast, the Congo and Mekong River basins are much smaller, each with around 60 million people, and the
Amazon, the world’s largest watershed, has a population of just 25 million.

If human population is an indicator of river basin importance, the Amur-Heilong with its 75 million people should attract as much attention as the Congo, Mekong or Amazon. Yet it doesn’t.

Over 93% of the population in the Amur-Heilong basin resides on 43% of its land area in northeast China where population density is high and settlement is recent. The remaining 7% of the populace is spread over relatively sparsely populated Mongolia and Russia, which together account for 57% of the basin area. In these countries, the environments are more harsh, economic development less vigorous, and population densities much lower.

The Mongolian and Russian portions of the Amur-Heilong basin have much in common with the bordering basins to the west (the Yenisey River basin, 7th largest in the world) and the north (the Lena River basin, 9th largest). These 2 rivers drain northern Siberia to the Arctic Ocean and together support fewer than 10 million people on a land area 52% larger than North America’s Mississippi River basin where over 70 million people reside.

The Yenisey, Lena, and Amur-Heilong are among the world’s largest river basins yet all are relatively unknown outside northeast Asia. The Lena River lies entirely within the territory of the Russian Federation whose government manages the basin. The Yenisey is shared by Russia and Mongolia, but most of the basin lies in Russia and only some of the headwaters flow from Mongolia.

Environmental, social, political and economic conditions in the upper Yenisey are similar in Mongolia and Russia, and this provides a foundation for shared understanding of land and water management. Russia and Mongolia have built on this foundation throughout a long history of cooperation on land and water management, and this enhances transboundary management of the Yenisey River.

Although the Amur-Heilong shares some characteristics with these Siberian rivers, the similarities end at the China border. Indeed, the increasing global influence of China will raise global awareness of all things Chinese...but there are additional reasons for the rise in global public awareness of the Amur-Heilong.

First, the Amur-Heilong River is one of the longest national border rivers and one of the longest undammed rivers in the world. Along the 4,444 km length of the main channel of the Amur-Heilong there are no dams and only 2 bridges, at Khabarovsk and Komsomolsk cities in Russia’s Khabarovsk Province.

While dams have spurred economic development in many regions of the world by increasing availability of or reducing costs for electricity and water, global opinion about the costs and benefits of dams is shifting. This results in part from recognition that many large dams have failed to meet expectations for water, electricity, or growth of local economies. The November 2000 Report of the World Commission on Dams concluded that feasibility studies and other assessments of large dam projects must consider the costs and benefits to the natural and human environments. The conclusions of this report underscore the global importance of the Amur-Heilong as a large undammed river. Beginning with a clean slate, the Amur-Heilong could well become a model for sound management of water resources throughout the world.

Second, the basin is home to some of the world’s most outstanding ecosystems and most charismatic wild plants and animals, including:

wild ginseng,
Siberian tiger,
Far Eastern leopard,
Mongolian gazelle,
snow sheep,
Siberian Spruce Grouse,
Red-crowned Crane, kaluga
Amur sturgeon, and
Hucho taimen.

The world’s most diverse temperate forests, extensive grasslands, and wide, fertile belts of floodplain wetlands characterize the basin. The basin includes 4 of the world’s top-priority 200 ecoregions as delimited by the World Wide Fund for Nature.

These and other natural features are summarized in Part One of this report.

Third, and probably the most compelling reason for the recent increase in awareness of the Amur-Heilong, is the suite of environmental threats brought by the rapidly growing economies and human populations described in Part Two.

Although the history of human settlement in the basin is short, damage done by excessive resource exploitation in the 20th and 21st centuries has severely depleted not only natural resources, but also the capacity of some renewable resources (such as fisheries, wetlands and forests) to recover.

The native peoples of Siberia represent a diverse range of ethnic groups. In the 17th century their total numbers are thought to have been less than 250,000. Their economies were based mainly on fishing, hunting and reindeer herding. Europeans arrived in the last decades of the seventeenth century and by 1710 numbered 66,000.

When the early European explorers were just beginning to roam eastern Russia, the major rivers in China had already experienced nearly 2 millennia of engineered water management. In the early nineteenth century, the Yangzi and Yellow Rivers had already been “harnessed” and “controlled” for human use, while the Amur-Heilong was scarcely known outside the native communities living along its banks.

Settlement of northeast China occurred at a pace similar to that in Russia prior to the second half of the twentieth century. A treaty between Russia and China in 1689 settled one of the first border conflicts. At that time cross-border trade relied on barter of silk and tea from China for furs and hides from Russia.

Agriculture began in northeast China over the ensuing 50 years to provide food grains to military forces guarding the border. But there was little increase in the farmed acreage until the Eastern China Railroad was constructed in the late nineteenth century under a Sino-Russian treaty and the region became involved in global trade.

Nevertheless much later and after the Peoples Republic of China was founded in 1949, farmland accounted for less than four% of the total area of the Sanjiang or “Three Rivers” plain in eastern Heilongjiang Province. Even by the mid-1960s the three northeastern most counties of Heilongjiang Province remained unfarmed.

The pace of exploitation changed after 1966 at the beginning of China’s Cultural Revolution when hundreds of thousands of young urbanites were sent to northeast China to begin “harnessing” the great northern wilderness. Their conversion of uplands and wetlands to farmland, and felling of forests was followed in the late 1970s and later by efforts on larger scales supported by international financing and imported heavy equipment.

These efforts continue today although national and provincial laws and regulations have been drafted to regulate the extent and pace of exploitation.

The remaining wildlands of northeast China are small, isolated, and fragmented representatives of the 900,000 km2 of wilderness that was present only a few centuries earlier. Whereas the human population in Russia’s Amur basin is small and declining, China’s Heilong River basin population is 15 times larger and growing. Mongolia’s portion of the Amur-Heilong has also changed most rapidly during recent decades and this has been prompted in part by a shift from a planned to a market economy.

But eastern Mongolia’s topography and climate are poorly suited to farming and better suited to the nomadic herding that has been practiced there for millennia. Eastern Mongolia was never richly endowed with forests as were southeast Russia and northeast China. And, at 224,000, the human population in Mongolia’s Amur-Heilong basin is only a small fraction of that in Russia (4%) or China (0.2%), and is growing slowly. For these reasons the changes in the Mongolian portion of the basin have been less dramatic than in China.

There has been relatively little conversion of wildland to farmland in Mongolia but formerly rich grasslands have been degraded by overgrazing over large areas. Forests are isolated, and limited in extent, and have been degraded by over harvest and anthropogenic fire. Rather than develop rural environments, people in eastern Mongolia are moving to urban centers where employment and education opportunities are better and standards of living higher. In rural areas, the one economic sector that is expanding rapidly is mining of the rich mineral resources.

As the above short summaries show, the 3 basin countries differ in their recent histories, socio-economics, demographics, and development strategies. This leads to a mix of conditions that complicates the management of the tri-national river basin as a single entity.

Long-term goals for the management of Amur-Heilong resources differ between the 3 basin countries and this accounts to a large extent for the many conservation issues on which so little progress has been made.

Many natural resources are severely threatened as discussed in Part Three of this report.

Some of these crises are well documented, such as the many wildlife species recognized as globally threatened on the Red List of the IUCN World Conservation Union.

Less well known but equally urgent crises include the quality and quantity of water in the wetland ecosystems and the ecological integrity of regional forests. These resources are, of course, linked because surface and groundwater quality and quantity are determined in part by the type and quality of vegetation cover on land. Both forests and water are threatened ultimately by the time lag between economic development and conservation in East Asia and throughout the world.

Waters of the Amur-Heilong River have been polluted for decades by industry and agriculture in all 3 basin countries, but most severely in China. The most recently publicized chemical spills on China tributaries of the Amur-Heilong reflect 2 different proximal causes of river contamination by toxic materials: one an accidental explosion at a chemical plant and the other intentional dumping of waste.

In both cases, the rush for financial gain in a developing market economy outpaced the application of constraints to protect the river and its ecology. The results are water and fish too toxic for use by wildlife, livestock or people.

Similarly, in commercial forestry, protection has lagged behind the pursuit of profit. Northeast China’s forests were logged or burned by anthropogenic fires from the 1950s through the 1990s and in the process a catastrophe was born. When unusually heavy rains fell in autumn 1998, the rivers flooded, property was destroyed and 154 people were drowned.

Recognizing the role of degraded forests, China responded by banning logging in most natural forests. This reduced the supply of domestic timber and caused a spike in demand for timber imports. Russia stepped in to meet this new demand by felling her forests virtually without regulation.

Unless this situation is addressed by effective controls on logging in the Russian Far East, China’s mistakes will be repeated in Russia, where some of the world’s most unfragmented, high value forests remain outside the tropics.

Conservation in Russia must catch up with exploitation and do so quickly.

One thread ties many of these basin-wide issues together in this report, and that is the concept of transboundary responsibility. The above examples of water and forests demonstrate clearly the need for basin countries to accept their shared responsibility for conservation and sustainable use of these resources.

However, an even more pressing example is provided by fisheries and sturgeon fisheries in particular. Sturgeon have been over fished for decades and the remaining stock of mature sturgeon cannot produce enough roe to meet the demand from world caviar markets.

The Amur-Heilong River is home to 2 endemic species of sturgeon, both of which yield caviar of high value. But populations of both species are declining due to overfishing to the extent that both are globally endangered per the IUCN Red List.

Legal fishing (in China) and illegal fishing (in Russia and China) continues despite knowledge in both countries that both species are sliding rapidly toward extinction.

Sturgeon in the Amur-Heilong now mainly occupy the main river channel, which, for most of its length, marks the China-Russia border. The two countries share the river and its resources, and this precludes either country resolving the sturgeon crisis on its own.

If the Amur-Heilong sturgeon fishery is to be restored, both countries must not only contribute, but enthusiastically and cooperatively wage a protective crusade for sturgeon and all other life in the river.

But the problem is not only overfishing. It includes water pollution, forestry, and potentially even hydropower generation, each of which will affect aquatic resources depending on the balance achieved between economic gain and environmental protection.

In recent years there have been many attempts at transboundary management of the Amur-Heilong’s natural resources. Unfortunately, most of these have failed to yield results, leaving only a few cases of effective cooperation for sustainable resource use. Most of these are transboundary nature reserves that are only small and isolated islands of protection on large landscapes of unregulated exploitation.

In Part Four of this report we discuss in 4 essays and 2 case studies new approaches needed to acknowledge and address the transboundary threats to natural resources in the river basin, and to overcome past failures.

Our goal in this Amur-Heilong River Basin Report is to

Present a compelling case for launching prompt and effective action backed by appropriate technology and adequate funding to restore the natural wealth of this globally important but largely unknown natural treasure.
We hope that administrators, managers, researchers, politicians, planners, conservationists, and business interests will find this Report useful in defining their role in this process.
Most importantly, we hope the Report will accelerate the spread of global awareness of this magnificent region and contribute to the restoration and long-term protection of its many unique features.

WWFolio Bolivia Nº 15

2008-10-27

Le presentamos nuestra edición informativa de octubre de 2008. En este número usted podrá leer sobre:

EDITORIAL VIVO:

La conservación es una disciplina de emergencia

PANTANAL VIVO:

Un enfoque ecor-regional transfronterizo para el Cerrado-Pantanal
Chichi Grillo y Rosa la Mariposa nos llevan a conocer y valorar la vida en el Pantanal boliviano
El trabajo de las artesanas del Pantanal boliviano

AMAZONIA VIVA:

Contaminación por mercurio en el Iténez
Problemática del mercurio
NUESTROS SOCIOS: El Instituto de Investigación para el Desarrollo (IRD) en Bolivia
Comunidades del Área Protegida Iténez hacia un futuro más sostenible
La Fuerza Naval de Bolivia y el Proyecto Centinela Ambiental
PUBLICACIONES VIVAS: Visión de Conservación de la Biodiversidad del Corredor Amboró-Madidi

VIDA FORESTAL:

Las instituciones públicas y su compromiso con la conservación de los bosques
La FTN Bolivia y la promoción de la oferta forestal certificada de Bolivia

MÁS VIDA:

4 de septiembre: Día Nacional de las Áreas Protegidas en Bolivia
Becas Príncipe Bernhard
Generando resultados de conservación a gran escala

Lake Bogoria Policy Brief 1_08

2008-07-22

Wetlands Management Guide

2008-05-07

Four international organizations with a long record of water conservation have partnered to produce a comprehensive reference for water and wetland managers. With input from several experts around the world, the "Wetland Management Planning - a Guide for Site Managers" deals with several pragmatic aspects: building trust, participation, and capacity; assessing wetlands values; setting achievable objectives and much more.

Cleaner, greener cotton: Impacts and better management practices

2007-10-24

Cotton is a water-intensive crop that is usually grown in dry regions. Add to that the heavy use of pesticides, inconsistent subsidies between rich and poor countries, and labour issues from the farm to the retail shop, and cotton becomes a product with considerable social and environmental impacts.

Despite its natural origins, and long history of cultivation, action is needed to improve the sustainability of cotton farming.

This report, Cleaner, greener cotton: Impacts and better management practices, shows how WWF is working to address the key environmental and social issues associated with cotton farming, focusing on making cotton more sustainable, which in turn, helps keep the environment it depends on healthy.

More Rice with Less Water: SRI - System of Rice Intensification

2007-10-03

Rice is a staple food for more than half of the world’s population. In Asia alone, more than 2 billion people obtain 60 to 70 percent of their calories from rice and its products.

Production and consumption of rice is expanding in Africa. Rice continues to be an important staple in Latin America. It is significant for food security in low-income and food-deficit countries. In Europe, it is a major food crop in certain regions of countries like Italy and Spain. Rice is indeed a global food grain.

This report:

Highlights the relationship between rice, food security and water scarcity.
Examines the contribution that the System of Rice Intensification (SRI) can make to address various challenges.

It also focuses on India, which has the world’s largest rice cultivated area and faces major water crisis and conflicts. WWF is working with farmers, scientists and national institutions to promote SRI, as it will reduce pressure on freshwater ecosystems and improve food production.

WWF’s work with rice is part of the global conservation organization's vision to improve productivity of major water-intensive crops like sugar and cotton. Although the report is based on the Indian experience, the findings are relevant to many rice producing countries with appropriate modifications to suit local conditions.

WWF Water Scorecard

2007-09-09

In 2005, 1.6 million children under the age of 5 died from illness caused by unsafe water and inadequate hygiene. Dams and other infrastructure have displaced more than 40 million people and have caused 60% of large rivers to become fragmented and ecologically less productive.

By 2025, 1.8 billion people will live in countries or regions of absolute water scarcity.

The challenges are great; so is our hope.

This scorecard tallies some of WWF’s successes in stemming the water crisis, and adds to a legacy of water-saving approaches for a living planet.

Programa Pantanal: Promoviendo el desarrollo sostenible

2007-08-29

Este brochure describe las acciones de WWF Bolivia en el Pantanal para el periodo 2007-2009.

Infórmese sobre:

La Cuenca Alta del Río Paraguay
Pantanal, humedal de importancia internacional
o Sitios Ramsar
o Área Protegida ANMI San Matías
o Área Protegida PN-ANMI Pantanal de Otuquis
Población de la región
Desarrollo sostenible
o Pantanal, sostén para una economía en crecimiento
Las actividades humanas que pueden causar daño al Pantanal
El Programa Pantanal de WWF Bolivia
o Áreas protegidas
o Especies
o Uso del suelo
o Sistemas de producción sostenible
Instituciones nacionales socias de WWF Bolivia en el marco de su Programa Pantanal

‘Mountains to the sea’ Implementation Planning Framework for the Convention on Biological Diversity’s thematic and cross-cutting programmes of work

2007-06-26

A tool for assisting the Parties in ecosystem-based, integrated implementation of the thematic programmes and cross-cutting issues of the Convention on Biological Diversity

Executive summary

WWF commissioned the development of this Implementation Planning Framework (IPF) for the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) to assist them adopting a ‘mountains to the sea’ or ‘ridge to reef’ approach for applying, through one integrated platform, the convention’s thematic and cross-cutting programmes, and, to do so within the framework of the ecosystem approach.

The 2005 discussion paper which preceded this work (also commissioned by WWF) reviewed the contents of the programmes of work and proposed a single structure to accommodate all of them. This structure has now been further developed to accommodate the outputs from CBD’s 8th CoP.

The proliferation of programmes of work (both thematic and cross-cutting) under the CBD has created an institutional challenge for Parties: how to avoid fragmentation and segregation, instead drawing together the various elements into one cohesive and integrated effort. A fundamental premise of the ecosystem approach is to recognize connectivity between biomes, and the need for management to focus on maintaining these ecological, hydrological and other linkages. Taken in isolation, the thematic programmes are not facilitating the application of the ecosystem approach as they should be.

This ‘mountains to the sea’ Implementation Planning Framework (IPF) was commissioned by WWF to encourage the CBD to recognise this fundamental issue that now faces the CBD and those implementing it; whether at the global, regional, national or local levels. On one hand, the principles and operational guidelines of the ecosystem approach promote cross-biome, integrated, scale-relevant management approaches; on the other hand, the CBD thematic programmes are in effect working against that aspiration. What the development of the CBD’s thematic programmes has (inadvertently) begun to do is create a new set of sectors which those implementing the CBD must now address; namely, biome sectors.

In the Implementation Planning Framework (IPF) prepared here the seven CBD thematic programmes have been condensed from over 150 pages to less than 50 pages without any significant loss of content. A key advantage, from an administrative perspective, is that with this IPF Parties can consult one cross-biome implementation plan for landscape/seascape-scale planning, and, if required, also consult the existing thematic programmes for further clarification in relation to a specific biome.

In undertaking the development of the ‘mountains to the sea’ IPF great care was taken to retain the intent and fundamentals of each thematic programme (goals, objectives, activities) so that the integrated, cross-biome plan did not lose any of the ideas and activities that each contained.

The ‘mountains to the sea’ IPF does not aim to make the thematic programmes redundant; simply to take their contents and re-present them in a standard framework of sub-programmes, many of which correspond with the cross-cutting programmes of the CBD. As such, the ‘mountains to the sea’ IPF is designed to be a management matrix to help Parties with the complex task of implementing CBD’s extensive and challenging agenda.

Allocating scarce water

2007-05-02

A WWF primer on water allocation, water rights and water markets, by Tom Le Quesne, Guy Pegram and Constantin Von Der Heyden, WWF-UK.

Globally, many freshwater ecosystems are suffering from massive over-abstraction. Which water allocation and rights systems can best secure environmental flows while meeting social needs?

This ‘primer’ is intended to provide preliminary guidance on the approaches to water allocation around the world, the current thinking on key issues, and provide pointers to further reading. The primer aims to offer a review of central concepts, rather than innovative thinking or state-of-the-art analysis.

World's Top 10 Rivers at Risk

2007-03-20

The primary objective of this report is to illustrate the most menacing threats to the world’s great river basins, in order to encourage dialogue, provoke debate, and urge governments and other stakeholders to take action before it is too late.

To do this, WWF has selected the “top ten” major rivers that, in our view, either a) already suffer most grievously under the weight of these threats or b) are bracing for the heaviest impacts. Thus, there are some rivers on the list that are so damaged that without serious restoration efforts they could be lost, and others that are relatively intact, but face massive degradation unless action is taken now to conserve them.

Surveying the results of eight international assessments, such as the Millennium Assessment ‘Wetlands and Water’ Synthesis Report that compiles the work of more than 2,000 authors and reviewers, WWF assessed the six most important threats based on their known impact on roughly 225 river basins. These are dams and infrastructure, excessive water extraction, climate change, invasive species, over-fishing, and pollution.

We provide this overview of the most serious threats to river basins to highlight those globally important watersheds at greatest risk, and to stress the importance of integrated river basin management solutions. Focusing analysis on watersheds with high ecological importance and those affecting large human populations, with a view to continental representation, the ten most endangered rivers emerge as: the Salween, La Plata, Danube, Rio Grande, Ganges, Murray-Darling, Indus, Nile, Yangtze and Mekong.

Rich countries, Poor water

2006-08-16

The WWF report Rich countries, poor water is one of the first comprehensive overviews of water issues in the developed world.

The report shows that a combination of climate change and drought and loss of wetlands that store water, along with poorly thought out water infrastructure and resource mismanagement, is making this crisis truly global. The report highlights impacts of water problems in countries such as Australia, Spain, Japan, and the UK, and the US.

Milestones in Water Conservation

2006-07-24

Since 1961, WWF has been active with governments, local communities and many other stakeholders to save the health of some of the most threatened ecosystems and safeguard the livelihoods they sustain.

Many of our actions have been controversial, and the strength of our advocacy and documented proof of better conditions obtained for people and nature have been a beacon of hope in some of the most important freshwater regions in the world. Increasing results have generated support and credibility with partners, including in the agriculture sector that consumes 70% of abstracted water, and businesses, that consume a further 20%.

In stopping large dams on rivers, conserving wetlands, growing more crops from less water, and establishing and strengthening river basin organisations especially among countries sharing a single river, WWF is making a difference in a fight where every drop counts. This summary highlights twelve of the many successes achieved by WWF and our partners.

Applying the principles of integrated water resource and river basin management – an introduction

2006-07-05

A report to WWF-UK prepared by: Tim Jones, Peter Newborne & Bill Phillips. June 2006.

Purpose and target audience
WWF, one of the leading global proponents of environmentally sustainable, integrated water resource and river basin management (IWRM/IRBM), has commissioned this report with the aim of:

• setting out the global policy framework behind the current focus on IWRM/IRBM;
• reviewing, in general terms, global progress with IWRM implementation;
• presenting indicators of successful IWRM/IRBM implementation and means of measuring/monitoring such indicators, with examples to the extent these are available;
• providing clearly signposted links to sources of further information.

This report is aimed primarily at WWF staff working on freshwater issues, but also at interested professionals within the water management sector (e.g. water companies, civil servants). In seeking to promote better implementation of IWRM, it provides a critical analysis of the current ‘state of the art’.

Payments for Environmental Services - An equitable approach for reducing poverty and conserving nature

2006-06-22

WWF publication on Payments for Environmental Services (June 2006) which gives an overview of current PES schemes and players, WWF's approach to equitable PES; and field examples of equitable PES projects (Guatemala, Peru, The Philippines, Tanzania, Indonesia and Eastern Europe).

The concept of payments for environmental services (PES) has received substantial interest in recent years as a way of creating incentive measures for managing natural resources, addressing livelihood issues for the rural poor, and providing sustainable financing for protected areas.

The basic idea is that those who “provide” environmental services by conserving natural ecosystems should be compensated by beneficiaries of the service.

WWF and its partners are developing a new, holistic PES approach that explicitly aims to balance poverty reduction with conservation, and to do so with social justice and equity. We see this equitable PES as one financing mechanism for conservation that, in the appropriate circumstances, will deliver both sustainable natural resource management and improved livelihood security for the rural poor.

One Europe More Nature - Project Brochure

2006-05-30

WWF's One Europe More Nature project is working to restore and maintain key European landscapes and habitats by forging innovative partnerships with a wide ranger of stakeholders.

At a series of sites across Europe, WWF and its local partners are working to identify opportunities where the interests of business and nature overlap, and forging innovative partnerships to take advantage of these opportunities. The people involved in our projects include big businesses, extractive industries, local entrepreneurs, farmers, foresters and politicians. Together, we are working to develop win-win situations where economic and ecological concerns go hand in hand, where businesses make a profit and nature’s capital is maintained or enhanced.

This brochure sets out the project's aims and objectives, and provides details of the eight project sites - Doñana (Spain), Tisza floodplain (Hungary), Maramures (Romania), the Ardennes (Spain), Gelderse Poort (the Netherlands), Prespa (Greece), Sinca Noua (Romania) and Väinameri (Estonia).

These sites serve as showcases for the One Europe More Nature approach – living examples of a new way of living, and an inspiration for people across Europe to get involved and start shaping Europe’s changing landscapes for the benefit of people and nature.

The project is funded and inspired by WWF Netherlands.

EU Water Policy: making economics work for the environment

2006-05-19