Mighty rivers running
dry
Dams, climate change among threats facing Asia's
waterways
Wednesday March 21, 2007
GENEVA Five rivers in Asia serving over 870 million people are
among the most threatened in the world, as dams, water extraction
and climate change all take their toll, the World Wide Fund for
Nature (WWF) said yesterday.
The Yangtze, Salween-Nu, Indus, Ganges and Mekong-Lancang rivers
make up half of the WWF's 10 most threatened river basins, which
"either already suffer most grievously under the weight of these
threats or are bracing for the heaviest impacts", the WWF said in a
report.
Governments are not doing enough to prevent freshwater systems from
being overexploited, the WWF said. As a result, about a fifth of
the world's 10,000 freshwater species have either become extinct or
are now endangered.
Only 21 of Earth's 177 longest rivers run freely from source to
sea, with dams and other forms of human construction destroying the
habitats of migratory fish and other species by altering the
water's natural ebb and flow.
The director of the WWF's Global Freshwater Programme, Mr Jamie
Pittock, said the threats facing river basins are varied and
interlinked. He said these problems require holistic policies,
rather than efforts that target just one aspect but can end up
being counter-productive.
For example, "as governments become concerned about climate change
reducing water run-off, they build more dams to store more water,
which then results in more water being extracted from the rivers
and so builds up more ecological problems", Mr Pittock said. Many
governments are also focusing on hydro-electric power plants as a
"clean" source of energy, but this means more dams, which kill off
fish populations, he added.
He warned of "dire consequences" if the situation is left
unchecked, with increasing risk of conflict over access to water,
as well as the spread of disease and a fall in nutrition
standards.
The report highlighted water extraction, dams and climate change as
the threats that will have the most impact on people, though
invasive species and pollution also pose serious problems. This is
particularly true for China's Yangtze River basin. Decades of
industrialisation, damming and the huge influx of sediment from
land conversion, have made the Yangtze one of the world's most
polluted rivers. AGENCIES
