Freshwater biodiversity conservation through protected areas: international obligations and lessons for Australia.
Jamie Pittock, WWF Research Associate, Fenner School of Environment & Society, ANU
Abstract
Freshwater ecosystems are among the planet’s most imperilled and least well conserved. This paper out lines the commitments that the world’s governments - - including the Australian Government – to conserve freshwater biota in representative protected areas. Recent tools for enhancing protected areas’ ability to sustain freshwater habitats are outlined. The paper concludes with a critique of the Australian governments actions to fulfil their commitments and apply the available tools for freshwater conservation in protected areas.
Introduction
Freshwater species and ecosystems are among the most imperiled in the world. The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA 2005:19,20,31) concluded:
“Freshwater ecosystems tend to have the highest proportion of species threatened with extinction.”
“The use of two ecosystem services - capture fisheries and freshwater - is now well beyond levels that can be sustained even at current demands, much less future ones.”
“… important gaps in the distribution of protected areas remain, particularly in marine and freshwater systems.”
Protected areas are a key conservation tool, and this paper summarises commitments made by the global community to deploy them to conserve freshwater ecosystems. However, given this drastic decline in freshwater biota, proponents need to ask why their efforts for conservation through protected areas have been so ineffectual to date. Protected areas have often been designed without thought to representation of freshwater ecosystems, and with critical design flaws (Abell et al. 2007, Pittock et al. 2008b). The ill-considered lumping of freshwater into terrestrial ecosystems by many environmentalists has seen the special need to sustain adequate water flows to freshwater biota ignored. Hence protected areas proponents need to improve their performance as much as the government efforts critiqued in this paper.
Multilateral agreements for freshwaters
The participating governments in the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development (UN 2002) and the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD 2004b) adopted the target to “significantly reduce the rate of loss of biodiversity by 2010,” a promise also endorsed by the Ramsar Convention of Wetlands (Ramsar 2002). For this to be achieved rapid action for conservation of freshwater biota is required.
Our governments have also agreed to halve the number of people without adequate access to water, sanitation, food and energy by 2015 (UNGA 2000; UN 2002), and deploy water-impacting technologies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (Pittock et al. 2008b). If implemented poorly, these promises will further degrade freshwater ecosystems. Thus conservation of freshwater ecosystems and services is the litmus test for the effectiveness of multilateral environmental agreements. In this context, the specific global commitments to deploy protected areas to conserve freshwater ecosystems are considered in more detail.
Global promises for freshwater protected areas
The CBD member governments have adopted a Programme of Work on Protected Areas (CBD 2004b) with targets for 2010, including the designation of 275 million hectares (M ha) of representative inland waters habitats. Further, they also committed to a Programme of Work on Biological Diversity of Inland Waters (CBD 2004a) that includes a target for sustainable management of 10% of the worlds river basins. The CBD has formally endorsed the Ramsar Convention as its lead partner for implementation of measures to conserve wetlands biodiversity (covering both inland waters and shallow marine wetlands) (Ramsar 2007b). In requiring contracting parties to have National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans (UN 1992), it is clearly an obligation of member governments like Australia’s to have an effective plan(s) to implement inland waters biodiversity conservation measures.
The Ramsar Convention on Wetlands obliges member governments to facilitate wise us of all wetlands and maintaining the ecological character of Ramsar wetlands of international importance (Ramsar 2007a). Ramsar sites may be designated that meet any of nine criteria that include representation of different wetland habitat types. As at November 2008, the 158 Contracting Parties to the Convention had designated 1822 wetland sites covering 168 million hectares globally. In 2008, the member governments adopted a Ramsar Strategic Plan (Ramsar 2008) that includes a commitment to reach 2,500 Ramsar sites covering 250 million hectares by 2014. Further, there is evidence that the Convention is translating conservation commitments into action. For instance, an assessment of the contracting parties’ 2002 national reports indicated that 40% of Ramsar sites had plans and 20% had plans in preparation (Pittock et al.2006).
New tools for freshwater conservation in protected areas
There are also promising new developments for the conservation of freshwater biota using protected areas. This year IUCN refined its protected areas definition and guidelines for categories (Dudley 2008) to better embrace freshwater habitats, including explicit recognition of unique freshwater protected area designations, such as wild rivers. These changes signal to practitioners their responsibilities and opportunities to better conserve freshwater ecosystems in nature reserves.
Complementing this action, and various freshwater ecoregion planning systems (Pittock et al.2008b), are new tools for the design and management of protected areas to conserve freshwater biota:
a)A global freshwater bioregionalization that can be used at a broad scale to assess the representation and gaps in protected area systems (Abell et al.2008);
b)Two guides to planning protected area systems that may increase resilience of freshwater ecosystems to the impacts of climate change (Hansen et al.2003, Matthews and Le Quesne 2008);
c)A summary of guidance on better management of wetland sites (Chatterjee et al.2008)
d)A revised “Management Effectiveness Tracking Tool”, that now better embraces freshwater sites (WWF 2007).
The availability of better, practical tools such as these removes any justification for delaying the expansion and better management of protected area systems to conserve freshwater biota.
Implementation of freshwater protected area agreements outside Australia
Outside Australia there is extensive and systematic action, including in many developing countries, to better conserve freshwater biota in protected areas, and a number of examples are detailed by Pittock (in press (2007)), including from the Niger River basin, Algeria and Tunisia. WWF reports that it set itself the milestone of instigating 100 million hectares in new freshwater protected areas between July 1999 and June 2007. A total of 84 million hectares of new reserves were established with small grants of up to CHF 40,000 (~AUD 50,000) to developing country conservation agencies. WWF supported 46 countries, most with small grants, that totalled CHF 2.007 million (~AUD$2.5 million). By June 2007 this had resulted in the designation of 291 more wetlands reserves (Pittock in press (2007)), and more than CHF 30 million has been leveraged for management.
Wither Australia?
In this context, the situation in Australia is now considered. Australia’s state and national governments have promised action to conserve freshwater biodiversity in representative protected areas since 1992 (Nevill 2007), and subsequently supported the targets agreed under the Convention on Biological Diversity and Ramsar Convention.
There have been some modest successes, for instance, the adoption of a new national environmental law, the Environment Protection & Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (Australian Government 1999), to enable implementation of the country’s Ramsar and other freshwater biodiversity conservation obligations (Pittock in press (2007)). On the whole, however, the commitments made by governments to conserve freshwater biota in protected areas is a grievous case of policy without action, as detailed by Nevill (2006; 2007; 2008). Key tools for developing a reserve system have not been agreed nationally, including a bioregionalization, coherent freshwater conservation targets, or a Ramsar Strategic Framework. As the ecological collapse of freshwater ecosystems in the Lower River Murray system indicates (Pittock 2008a), there is little time to act if Australia is to stem the rate of loss of its freshwater biota.
Conclusions:
Freshwater biodiversity is gravely threatened and has been largely overlooked by the protected areas community. There are some signs this gap has been recognized, including with the publication of a range of key tools. Further, our governments have adopted ambitious freshwater protected areas targets and some progress is evident overseas.
Regrettably Australian authorities have consistently failed to implement their commitments to systematically conserve high conservation value freshwater ecosystems, languishing behind the efforts of a number of developing countries. In this context, what is needed is leadership to fully use the existing mechanisms such as the site protection tools under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act (Australian Government 1999), for designation and management of Ramsar, National and World Heritage sites.
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