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  • Global threats to human water security and river biodiversity

Global threats to human water security and river biodiversity

Oct 18, 2010
Created by Conservation Biology Institute
Global threats to human water security and river biodiversity

About

Protecting the world’s freshwater resources requires diagnosing threats over a broad range of scales, from global to local. Here we present the first worldwide synthesis to jointly consider human and biodiversity perspectives on water security using a spatial framework that quantifies multiple stressors and accounts for downstream impacts. We find that nearly 80% of the world’s population is exposed to high levels of threat to water security. Massive investment in water technology enables rich nations to offset high stressor levels without remedying their underlying causes, whereas less wealthy nations remain vulnerable. A similar lack of precautionary investment jeopardizes biodiversity, with habitats associated with 65% of continental discharge classified as moderately to highly threatened. The cumulative threat framework offers a tool for prioritizing policy and management responses to this crisis, and underscores the necessity of limiting threats at their source instead of through costly remediation of symptoms in order to assure global water security for both humans and freshwater biodiversity.
Tags
global water stress, river, threat, biodiversity
Recommended by Conservation Biology Institute

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26 Datasets
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Bookmarked by 10 Members
C. J. Vörösmarty, P. B. McIntyre, M. O. Gessner, D. Dudgeon, A. Prusevich, P. Green, S. Glidden, S. E. Bunn, C. A. Sullivan, C. Reidy Liermann & P. M. Davies

About the Gallery Author

Conservation Biology Institute

We provide advanced conservation science, technology, and planning to empower our partners in solving the world’s critical ecological challenges

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