Global River Crisis

Rivers in the world are under severe threat despite decades of attention to pollution control and investments in environmental protection.Rivers of the world least at risk are those where human populations are smallest. Rivers in arctic regions and inaccessible areas of the tropics appear to be in the best health. Nearly 80 percent of the world's human population lives in areas where river waters are highly threatened posing a major threat to human water security and resulting in aquatic environments where thousands of species of plants and animals are at risk of extinction.Rivers in different parts of the world are subject to similar types of stresses - agricultural intensification, industrial development, river habitat modification and many other factors.Compounding the problem is that some of the negative influences on rivers arrive in indirect ways. Mercury pollution, for example, is a byproduct of electricity generation at coal-fired power plants. It is emitted into the atmosphere and then is deposited on river surfaces. Fresh water is the world's most essential natural resource, underpinning human life and economic development as well as the existence of countless organisms ranging from microscopic organisms to fish, amphibians, birds and terrestrial animals of all kinds. But burgeoning human populations, damming, irrigation and other agricultural and engineering practices, chemical pollution, and the accidental as well as purposeful global redistribution of plants, fish, and other animal species have had far-reaching effects on rivers and their aquatic inhabitants.