The World's Forgotten Fishes - 44

© Nicolas Axelrod / Ruom / WWF-Greater Mekong

10. A BRIGHTER FUTURE FOR FRESHWATER FISHES

If we do, we will bring life back to our
dying rivers, lakes and wetlands. And
we will bring freshwater fishes back
from the brink too - securing food
and jobs for hundreds of millions of
people, safeguarding cultural icons
and our favourite pets, ensuring prey
for threatened predators from river
dolphins to fishing cats, and further
enhancing the health of the freshwater
ecosystems that underpin our societies
and economies.
And we don't need to conjure up a
magical silver bullet or some innovative
new solution. We know what works and
what needs to be done. A blueprint has
already been developed: it's in the 5th
Global Biodiversity Outlook (GBO5),
which was the result of a collective
effort from the conservation community,
including parties to the Convention on
Biological Diversity, other governments,
observers and a host of global experts.
Echoing the Emergency Recovery
Plan for freshwater biodiversity,
GBO5 outlines the pathway for a
sustainable freshwater transition.
This freshwater transition is a realistic
and pragmatic one, based on measures
that have already been tried and tested
in at least some rivers, lakes and
wetlands. It is a comprehensive plan
that moves us away from today's ad
hoc conservation successes towards a
The World's Forgotten Fishes page 44

strategic approach that can deliver
solutions at the scale necessary to
reverse the collapse in biodiversity -
and set us on course to a future
where our freshwater ecosystems
are once again fully healthy and
teeming with freshwater fishes and
other wildlife.
The transition calls for rapid
measures to be implemented globally
to let rivers flow more naturally,
protect and restore critical habitats
and species, and reduce pollution
levels. It outlines the need to control
the spread of invasive non-native
aquatic species and end overfishing,
destructive fishing and
unsustainable sand mining.
And these measures really do work.
Take the example of dam removals:
since the dams on America's Penobscot
river were pulled down allowing
fish to migrate up from the sea once
again, river herring numbers have
skyrocketed from a few thousand to
over 2.8 million! Or the Cambodian
governments decision not to build
mega hydropower dams on the
Mekong, which will help protect vital
freshwater fisheries. Or securing
international protection for Colombia's
entire Bita River under the Ramsar
Convention. So, what specifically
needs to be done?

COMMIT
Governments must agree to ambitious
targets for 2030, which will safeguard
freshwater ecosystems and the future of
freshwater fishes and other species, in
the new global framework on nature that
will be agreed at the 2021 CBD conference
- building on the freshwater transition
outlined in the 5th Global Biodiversity
Outlook. But agreeing an ambitious agenda
for the next decade is not enough: countries
must commit to implementing the solutions
that will achieve the targets they have set.
We have learnt our lessons with the Paris
Agreement, the Sustainable Development
Goals (SDGs) and the failure to achieve the
previous Aichi targets under the CBD: this
time we need more action and less talk, more
effort and less excuses. And remember, it is
possible to have global commitments that are
actually implemented; we only need to look
at the Montreal Protocol and how effective it
has been in protecting the ozone layer.
Implementing the new biodiversity agenda
also needs to move beyond the realm of
conservation. Governments must incorporate
specific new targets into the Sustainable
Development Goals for freshwater fishes,
which are almost entirely absent from the
current 169 SDG indicators despite their
obvious links to poverty (SDG1), hunger
(SDG2), responsible consumption and
production (SDG 12), and life under water
(SDG14) and on land (SDG 15). This will be
crucial if governments truly are committed
to delivering the ambitious agenda.
The World's Forgotten Fishes

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