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solonavi 21 March 2007 Habitat 112 views No Comment Print This Post  Email This Post

WWF

Rivers on every continent are drying out, threatening severe water shortages, according to a new WWF report.

The report, World’s Top Rivers at Risk, released ahead of World Water Day (22 March), lists the top ten rivers that are fast dying as a result of climate change, pollution and dams.

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Five of the ten rivers listed in the report are in Asia alone. They are the Yangtze, Mekong, Salween, Ganges and Indus. Europe’s Danube, the Americas’ La Plata and Rio Grande/Rio Bravo, Africa’s Nile-Lake Victoria and Australia’s Murray-Darling also make the list.

Dams along the Danube River — one of the longest flowing rivers in Europe — have already destroyed 80 per cent of the river basin’s wetlands and floodplains. Even without warmer temperatures threatening to melt Himalayan glaciers, the Indus River faces scarcity due to over-extraction for agriculture. Fish populations, the main source of protein and overall life support systems for hundreds of thousands of communities worldwide, are also being threatened.

The report calls on governments to better protect river flows and water allocations in order to safeguard habitats and people’s livelihoods.
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In addition, cooperative agreements for managing shared resources, such as the UN Watercourses Convention, must be ratified and given the resources to make them work, says WWF.

“The freshwater crisis is bigger than the ten rivers listed in this report but it mirrors the extent to which unabated development is jeopardizing nature’s ability to meet our growing demands,” says Pittock. “We must change our mindset now or pay the price in the not so distant future.”

Aerial view of the Mekong River, one of the ten rivers listed in the WWF report as being threatened by pollution and dams.
© WWF-Canon / Elizabeth Kemf