Water and biodiversity : Two sides of the same coin

Water is our most valuable natural resource. It is essential to all basic human needs, including food, drinking water, sanitation, health, energy and shelter. Its proper management is the most pressing natural resource challenge of all. Without water we have no society, no economy, no culture, and no life. Although water is a global issue, the problems and solutions are often highly localized. Our natural environment supplies clean drinking water. Biodiversity supplement the ability of the environment to do this. The Convention on Biological Diversity (SCBD,2010) promotes the restoration and maintenance of biologically diverse ecosystems as a way of improving access to clean drinking water and as a means to eradicate poverty by using the services that healthy watersheds and freshwater ecosystems provide naturally, both cities and rural areas can purify drinking water and meet other societal goals at a fraction of the cost of conventional technological alternatives. Human needs and environmental needs are often uneven against each other in a false dichotomy; protecting the interests of one side, we worry, harms the interests of the other. But in the case of drinking water, human and environmental interests are clearly aligned. Holistic water management is essential if the world is to achieve sustainable development.

The present focus is on only one, although important, dimension of water: its use by humans for drinking. The linkages between water, biological diversity and development / poverty alleviation aims to raise awareness of sustainable approaches to managing drinking water, which have been tested globally. It also demonstrates how biodiversity conservation can be used wisely to achieve development goals. Many of us never consider water’s source. This luxury is unavailable to billions of the world’s people, whose water circumstances lead to a daily struggle involving disease, death, hardship and social injustice; women and children are particularly affected. Lack of access to safe drinking water is a primary definer of poverty itself.