Posted on 07 September
2010
Stockholm, Sweden
– The impacts of climate change are most
visible in the dramatic changes occurring
to the planet’s freshwater resources, says
a new report written by WWF for the World
Bank.
The report, Flowing
Forward, finds both “visible” water such
as rivers, lakes, precipitation, glaciers
and snowpack, and water used for crops and
livestock, health and sanitation services,
hydroelectric and nuclear power as well
as manufacturing and business are heavily
influenced by climate change.
WWF's John Matthews
talks climate change, freshwater at World
Water Week
“The very language of
climate change — droughts, floods, desertification,
famines, tropical cyclones — is the language
of water,” says WWF-US CEO Carter Roberts.
“Flowing Forward defines the methodologies
that are necessary to sustain healthy economies
and healthy ecosystems through water. Water
is what unites us. And good water management
is the tool we need to sustain development
in the face of climate change.”
Effective water resource
management is central to adapting our economies
and societies to emerging climate conditions.
But the uncertainty surrounding our future
climate poses a major challenge to engineers
and policymakers, especially when developing
long-term water infrastructure development
strategies. Flowing Forward marks the first
comprehensive set of tools to achieve climate-sustainable
water management.
“We can’t wait another
30 years for predictions to tell us how
climate change is affecting freshwater resources.
The threats are being felt now. The World
Bank needs climate adaptation decision-making
techniques, and it needs them now,” says
Julia Bucknall, Manager for the World Bank’s
Energy, Transport and Water Department.
Flowing Forward recognizes
that sustainability in water management
has become a moving target, and this is
now the biggest obstacle to implementing
solutions to the impacts of climate change.
“We can no longer assume
that what is sustainable now will remain
sustainable in 10 years, much less 50. So
a shifting climate means that the rules
for water management must change too. Our
current model of ‘sustainable development’
is threatened by climate change. Engineers,
policymakers and resource managers need
new tools to prepare for more extreme floods
and droughts, and we believe that ecosystems
are the best scorecard to see how our cities
farms, and economies are adapting to climate
change.” says co-author John Matthews of
WWF-US.
“We need to design and
operate dams, irrigation systems and energy
production grids in ways that will help
people and ecosystems adjust to emerging
climate conditions together,” he adds.
But report co-author
Tom Le Quesne from WWF-UK says the report’s
most critical finding is that water managers
and policymakers already have most of the
important tools to cope with climate change
in hand:
“The existing library
of methods to manage river basins and water
resources will go a long way in creating
the conditions that will make our lakes,
rivers and groundwater more sustainable.
Our goal now is to help the water sector
deploy tools that they already know work:
environmental flows, Integrated Water Resource
Management and the creation of monitoring
networks.”
+ More
Counting dolphins, critical
to preserve health of South American rivers
Posted on 07 September
2010
Bogotá, Colombia - A slow-moving
canoe full of marine biologists gingerly
steers through a narrow Amazon tributary.
On both sides, treetops surface above a
flooded forest.
10 minutes later the
group emerges onto a huge and placid oval
lake, the Cocará lagoon, located
on the Peruvian side of the Putumayo river.
Suddenly, a powder-pink dolphin jumps and
dives in an elegant arc.
This is the 11th expedition
to count river dolphins in South America,
a critical way to assess not only the dolphins’
numbers, but also the health of rivers and
related biodiversity. In June 2010, the
scientific team of the Omacha Foundation
set sail from Puerto Leguízamo to
evaluate how healthy the dolphins and their
habitats are in the three-border area along
the Putumayo river, where conservation is
crucial for the Amazon Biome.
River dolphins are an
umbrella species: a high population is a
sign that the rivers are healthy as well
as other land and aquatic species.
“When rivers deteriorate
in quality, dolphins disappear first”, said
Saulo Usma, Fresh Water Coordinator for
WWF Northern Amazon & Chocó-Darién
Regional Programme.
Ultimately, scientists
hope this research will lead to better protection
of South America’s freshwater dolphins,
and the rivers they call home.
A major venture
Since 2006 the Omacha Foundation, with WWF
support, has travelled more than 4,200 kms
along 12 of the most important rivers in
South America. In the past four years they
have spotted more than 4,000 dolphins in
the Orinoco and Amazon basins, broken down
among three different species: the grey
(Sotalia fluviatilis), the pink (Inia geoffrensis)
and the Bolivian (Inia boliviensis).
There are an estimated
40,000 thousand river dolphins in the region,
and even though this may sound like a healthy
population, dolphins are more threatened
now than ever. Deforestation, water pollution
from mining, overfishing, the use of dolphin
meat as bait and infrastructure projects
are some of the biggest threats to these
species.
As recently as four
years ago, data on river dolphin populations
in the Orinoco and Amazon basins, two major
fresh water reservoirs in the planet, was
not sufficient. A standardized counting
method and consistent statistics were also
missing.
Scientists, as well
as other environmental organizations, convinced
of the necessity to persuade governments
to give priority to the Orinoco and Amazon
basins’ conservation, decided to undertake
a journey through the most important rivers
in South America in countries like Colombia,
Venezuela, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador and some
parts of Brazil, to finally learn how many
dolphins live in this region, their health,
and how to develop a long-term conservation
programme.
The dolphin census is
the brainchild of Fernando Trujillo, Director
of the Omacha Foundation. Trujillo adapted
a model for counting and extrapolating data
about dolphins designed by statisticians
at St. Andrew’s University in Scotland and
has carried out 11 expeditions so far.
The method is being
applied to a similar survey in Asia, which
hosts the world’s only other significant
population of freshwater dolphins.
A charismatic symbol
By monitoring the dolphins and their health,
the biologists hope that these aquatic mammals,
with their playful habits and unique appearance,
could become a charismatic symbol for preserving
the Orinoco and Amazon basins.
Today, there is a plan
supported by WWF to protect freshwater dolphins
in South America, and countries like Bolivia
and Colombia would be the first ones to
implement it, using some of this research
as a basis.
Governments are being
encouraged to do more to protect dolphins,
there is a network of 80 researchers trained
to be part of other expeditions outside
their countries, and agreements with local
indigenous communities to apply sustainable
fishing methods have been settled.
Yet, the problem with
fisheries, the most difficult one to deal
with, still remains.
Dolphins are being used
as bait to catch mota (Calophysus macropterus),
a scavenger fish from the Orinoco and Amazon
basins which fish sellers discovered could
replace the catfish capaz, a highly demanded
species from the Magdalena river -almost
on the brink of extinction-, and then sell
it in the main cities in Colombia under
the name Capaz. “So it is essential to put
this issue on the international agenda”,
asserted Trujillo.
The science of counting
dolphins
Counting dolphins is a simple task but has
its own specialized methodology. Math formulas
are used to calculate the speed at which
dolphins swim as well as their distance
in relation to the riverbank.
The researchers divide
into two groups. One team goes to the fore
the other to the aft. Both groups carry
a compass, binoculars, a GPS, a pencil and
index cards to record the time, the angle,
distance coordinates, if it’s gray or pink,
and the number of dolphins spotted.
The boat zigzags at
a speed of 12 kms per hour and a hundred
meters from the riverbank. After having
travelled two kilometres, it crosses to
the other side.
Asia, the mirror
Researchers fear that the Amazonian dolphins
could reach a similar situation to those
in Asia, where in some places dolphins have
been declared extinct.
“We don’t want to be
in the same situation as in the Yangtze,
where dolphin sighting has become an exception”,
said Trujillo.
While some believe there
is still an opportunity here for river dolphin
conservation, others see the mirror of Asia
as a blurred image.
María Delgado,
a 29-year-old subsistence fisherwoman, thinks
environmentalists are creating an unwarranted
alarm. “There are plenty of fish, they just
know how to avoid being caught”, she said.
Scientists make clear
the threats in South America are still at
a manageable stage. “The fishery industry
situation, pollution from mining and oil
exploitation, deforestation and bycatch,
can be slashed back if we involve all actors
and encourage governments to get on board”,
concluded Usma.
The plan, called the
Action Plan for South American River Dolphins:
2010-2020 hopes to address these threats.
