By Dr. Theresa Mundita S. Lim / Executive Director, Asean Centre for Biodiversity
Water supports the sustenance of all life on the planet, more so in this time of the 2019 novel coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic when handwashing and proper hygiene with clean water prove to be humanity’s best defence against the disease.
However, access to clean water remains a global problem with 2.2 billion lacking access to safely managed drinking water, while 3 billion lacking basic handwashing facilities, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund and the World Health Organization.
As the Asean Centre for Biodiversity joined the recent international community in celebrating World Water Day with a focus on how water can help mitigate the impacts of climate change, we take this opportunity to emphasize the inextricable relationship of biodiversity and water.
Inland waters—such as lakes, rivers, ponds, streams, groundwater, springs and wetlands—supply water for the irrigation of agricultural areas in the region.
The agriculture sector alone consumes 85.5 percent of the total water withdrawals in the region.
This is followed by the industrial sector at 7.8 percent and the domestic sector at 6.6 percent, according to the United Nations Environment Programme.
Inland waters, likewise, support aquatic biodiversity—including reptiles, amphibians, fish, mollusks, insects, other aquatic invertebrates, and water plants, and water birds and several other migratory species in this region.
In this time of climate crisis, conserving inland waters, which are known to contribute to ecosystem-based approaches to climate change adaptation.
While the region’s abundant freshwater resources are fortunate to get 9.5 percent of the total global precipitation, water availability is largely influenced by seasonal changes and the rise of global temperatures.
The increasing water requirements for agricultural, industrial and domestic uses of a growing Asean population also pose a threat to the region’s inland waters, in effect putting the water supply at risk.
In the region, leading the inland waters conservation are the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands of International Importance and the East Asian-Australasian Flyway Partnership.
At present, the region has 54 Ramsar sites covering 25,160 square kilometers. In terms of coverage, Indonesia has the largest area (13,730 sq km), followed by Thailand (3,997 sq km), and the Philippines (2,440 sq km).
The Asean member-states recognize the value of robust ecosystems in meeting the region’s water requirements, thereby integrating sustainable resource management measures into their respective national biodiversity strategies and action plans. The ACB has been mobilizing initiatives across sectors and generating participation of governments and stakeholders to ensure that biodiversity targets are within reach.
Although progress in increasing protected areas has been made in the past years, there is a need to transform individual protected areas into protected area networks to increase the effectiveness of species and their corresponding habitat conservation.
In Cambodia, its protected area system, which has expanded by 23 percent between 2016 and 2018, according to Cambodia’s Sixth National Report submitted to the Convention on Biological Diversity.
It said effective protected area management boosts efforts in conserving natural resources like water, and guaranteeing resilience of the ecosystems and human communities.
Indigenous knowledge is an important element in effective community-based resource management.
In Sabah, Malaysia, fishing communities employ the tagal system, which prohibits anyone to fish in parts of a river at certain times.
This partnership between the communities and the authorities raises awareness of the importance of conserving freshwater resources while increasing the income generated by the members of the communities.
To date, there are more than 600 tagal zones in nearly 200 rivers in 17 districts in Sabah.
Conserving biodiversity is in everyone’s interest. A holistic, multidisciplinary and multisectoral approach is key to strengthening existing laws and policies governing the management and sustainable use of biodiversity.
Under these exceptionally difficult circumstances in light of the Covid-19 pandemic, may we fully appreciate the values of the ecosystem services that inland waters provide. In the end, the whole of society stands to gain from conserving and restoring these ecosystems.