Biodiversity is in crisis. Many species are threatened with extinction. Various pressures (demopgrahic, economic, industrial, agricultural) combine with the artificialisation of natural environments, the voluntary and involuntary introduction of invasive species, climate change, rising temperatures and the resulting alteration of the water cycle.
The current anthropogenic biodiversity crisis and the water crisis are fundamentally linked. Without water in sufficient quantity and quality, natural habitats and the species that live in them wither away.
Most of the international conventions and major international events associated with them, such as the Ramsar Convention on Wetland, UNESCO’s World Natural Heritage, the Convention on Biology Diversity (CBD), the Convention on international Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora and the UICN World Congress, remind us of this.
Resolving these crises means working to ensure that water and biodiversit policies, which are all too often conceived in silos, are consistent with each other. But we also need to take action!
In particular, INBO, its Members and Partners, recommend that ambitious Nature-Based Solutions programs be planned at river basin level. By accumulating them on this scale, they can reach a critical mass, become more effective, and increase the mutiple co-benefits expected. In addition to their benefits for biodiversity, the Natural Water Retention Measures (NWRMs)help, for example, to prevent of drought and flooding, and to preserve landscapes.
The financing of these actions can in part be integrated and covered by basin management plans and associated investments programs. However, it may also be worth mobilising innovative funding mechanisms, such as payments for environmental services.
INBO and its partners are working, by their projects and exchanges with regionals networks, to promote the preservation of biodiversity and its fundings at basin scale.
Climate change adaptation
Transboundary cooperation