Fresh Water Solutions

As a natural resource essential to life on Earth, fresh water must be managed in a way that meets human and species needs alike. Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) is a framework that takes into account social, political, environmental, and economic factors to best allocate and manage fresh water given the multiple and competing demands on this resource. IWRM engages communities, governments, and other stakeholders in transparent decision-making processes that balance competing water needs, enhance governance, and ensure equitable access to water resources.

Why is it important?

Freshwater ecosystems and biodiversity are not sufficiently protected. There are currently some 126,000 freshwater-dependent species across the planet, whose future remains uncertain. Although 1,218 inland wetland sites have been designated — mostly under the international Ramsar convention — designation alone does not ensure the protection of freshwater biodiversity. Effective management and financing is necessary across these critical ecosystems and watersheds to ensure the provision of fresh water when and where it's needed. There are also vast areas of freshwater wilderness, requiring sound and careful management to preserve global stocks of freshwater resources.

Effective management is made more complex by the fact that water crosses political and biophysical boundaries, with more than two-thirds of our planet's 260 river basins shared by two or more countries. Therefore, we must build partnerships and agreements among national governments and civil society that encompass entire watersheds, including the origin and end point of freshwater flows and services. Better management using IWRM will also allow us to maximize the freshwater services benefits, avoid undesirable service trade-offs (where important freshwater benefits such as fisheries are lost due to the pursuit of other services like hydropower production), and develop greener economies.

We also can better take care of the water necessary to sustain our freshwater ecosystems, or "environmental flows." Ecologists generally recommend that we keep 80 percent of our water in rivers to sustain environmental flows, yet allocations can be as low as 10 percent.

How is CI contributing?

CI and partners are demonstrating how IWRM, good governance, civil society involvement, management of transboundary waterways, protected area creation, and sound fresh water development can protect freshwater ecosystems and biodiversity on the ground. We will focus our work on eight priority or 'flagship' projects and scale up results across the remainder of CI's field programs, applying successful models in other geographies. We will document and share the results to amplify the reach of our work with global audiences.

What are CI's major areas of work?

• Ensuring that water allocation, governance, policies, institutions, and financing are in place to secure equitable access, sound water resource management, environmental flows and biodiversity conservation.

• Implementing integrated watershed resource management pilot projects across globally critical landscapes and watersheds to ensure equitable access and to protect freshwater ecosystems, service provision and environmental flows.

• Protecting and restoring large watersheds, landscapes, and sites, integrating fresh water consideration into CI's overall body of work, through applying the best science, planning, policy and market engagement and on-the-ground action.

Results expected

• At least 20 percent of the world's realized freshwater services are sustained and at least 20 percent of the potential services stocks for future generations are secured in biodiversity hotspots and wilderness areas.

• At least 17 percent of inland water and terrestrial ecoregions and key biodiversity areas where biodiversity is most threatened and concentrated are protected under the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity.

• Cross-boundary water management and governance are enhanced in CI flagship sites and other places where CI works by working with these governments to follow the UN Watercourses Convention.

• Strengthened regional and national water policies and river basin/watershed institutions help countries adapt to climate change, maintain environmental flows and establish sound IWRM programs.

• Landscapes, watersheds, and production areas are managed, from ridge to estuary, in CI flagship projects by developing science, tools, and policy; engaging with markets; and conducting other activities including sustainable financing. This work will result in documented species conservation and human well-being benefits.

Priorities

• Helping freshwater flagship projects and other CI country programs implement National Biodiversity Action Plans and strategies, and committing to national protected area targets as part of the Convention on Biological Diversity.

• Advising Liberia, Costa Rica, and other CI countries that have yet to ratify the UN Watercourses Convention, by conducting feasibility studies on ratification and working with governments to advocate for ratification.

• Implementing ecosystem-based climate adaptation projects which show how taking better care of our planet's freshwater ecosystems improves resiliency and reduces the vulnerability of human and species populations to climate change.

Flagship projects

• Create a national payment for ecosystem services (PES) program with South Africa's National Biodiversity Institute; restore and manage grazing lands in the Kamiesberg Mountain Catchment to benefit more than 100,000 people; and provide incentives and options to conserve water, restore the health of former mining sites, and create green jobs through the Living Edge of Africa Program in the Eastern Cape.

• Use scientific modeling to determine:

  • How different development scenarios and climate change would impact ecosystem service flows in the Okavango delta
  • To promote equitable water resource allocation
  • Provide alternative livelihoods
  • Protect high-value upstream ecosystem service areas in Angola

  This work will alleviate poverty in those regions and secure cattle grazing, agriculture, and tourism benefits downstream in the Okavango river basin, benefitting more than 1 million people.

• Protect the sources of Madagascar's water and ensure sustainable management of freshwater ecosystems by implementing IWRM and linking this work to water and sanitation projects underway by relief agency partners in five large landscapes and watersheds.
  FEATURE: Fresh Water for Health in Madagascar

• Protect and restore forest fragments and freshwater springs in upland areas to secure water services for São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Minas Gerais, and Espirito Santo residents in Brazil, and create state-level PES programs and institutions to pay for that protection, benefitting almost 100 million people.

• Consolidate protected areas for fresh water through PES, conservation agreements, and climate change adaptation strategies in the páramos and high Andean forests in Colombia. We will communicate results to help educate governments and citizens in Colombia about the value of ecosystem services.

• Build upon existing successful PES projects in the Tibetan Plateau serving as proof of concept that PES can positively impact water quality and quantity for Chinese citizens. This will also provide an entrée into the highly political and complicated issue of dam development throughout China and downstream countries on the Mekong.
  VIDEO: CI's Greater Mekong Program

• Provide the Cambodian, Lao, and Vietnamese governments and the Mekong River Commission with ecosystem-service-based economic models for sustainable watershed management of the mid to lower Mekong, the Cardamom Mountains, and the Tonle Sap lake, taking climate change and dams into account. We will implement community fisheries and PES programs and influence the implementation, design, operation and impacts of Mekong River dams. We will develop and implement strategies for freshwater ecosystem-based resilience to climate change in the Tonle Sap.
  FEATURE: A Welcome Flood in Tonle Sap

• Establish the Viti Levu Islandscape in Fiji, adopting IWRM and working closely with indigenous communities who own 87 percent of Fiji's land. We will also work with FIJI Water, a major investor in watershed protection. Expected results include improved water quality and quantity.
  FEATURE: Fresh Water for Fiji