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WWF says world's mightiest rivers are at risk
They were once mighty freshwater bodies on whose banks human
civilizations were born. But now, many of the world's great rivers
are threatened by over-extraction of water, climate change,
construction of large dams, and pollution.
The World Wide Fund for Nature says rivers at risk are found on
almost every continent - the Yangtze, Mekong, Salween, Ganges and
Indus in Asia, the Danube in Europe, the Plata in South America,
the Rio Grande in North America, the Nile in Africa, and the
Murray-Darling in Australia.
The conservation group says most rivers no longer run freely from
source to sea. It says dams are altering their natural flow,
industrial effluents have polluted their waters, and 20 percent of
the world's 10,000 freshwater species have become extinct.
The threats vary. For example, the Salween in South East Asia is
under pressure due to damming, while the Danube is threatened by
the dredging and straightening of banks to ease shipping. The Rio
Grande in the United States and the Ganges in South Asia are
falling victim to over-extraction of water for irrigation and
domestic consumption. The Indus faces a threat from climate change
because of its high dependency on glacier water.
The WWF's coordinator for freshwater policy, Vidya Moni, outlined
some of the problems in New Delhi.
"Large infrastructure was a big threat to the river Nile, there
was a big threat to river Danube in terms of pollution which was
extensively caused because of industrialization, river Yangtze in
China is over-polluted, with coal mining happening on the
fringes," she said.
The report says communities living on riverbanks are the worst
affected, threatened with loss of their water-based livelihoods,
such as fishing and agriculture.
Gurdev Singh is from Punjab state in northern India. He has
witnessed the severe degradation in recent decades of the Ganges,
which flows by his village.
Singh says the water was once so clear, it was possible to see
fish swimming in the river. Now, industrial effluents have
polluted the river severely. As a result, crop yields have been
reduced, and animals drinking the water turn sick.
The secretary-general of WWF-India, Ravi Singh, has called for
governments to radically step up efforts to preserve freshwater
sources, and treat river conservation as part of national security
and economic policy.
"The risks that we see on these issues are going to multiply
unless we change the way we are set today. And these risks are
such that [they] are going to affect communities, they are going
to effect biodiversity, wild life, climate," said Singh.
WWF says 40 percent of the world's population now lives in river
basins that are under stress.
 
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