Safeguarding water for the environment is critical for biodiversity and for people.
The people who depend most on the services provided by aquatic ecosystems are generally the poorest and most marginalized in developing countries and consequently those hardest hit by biodiversity loss.
About 35 per cent of the world’s biodiversity-rich wetlands, for example, have been lost or seriously degraded since 1970.
A key approach for reversing this trend centres on ensuring that water continues to flow in a way that will sustain aquatic ecosystems, thereby supporting populations, economies, sustainable livelihoods, and well-being.
This means maintaining the right quality, quantity and timing of water flows – which scientists call “environmental flows”, or “E-flows” for short.
