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Healthy rivers and aquatic ecosystems

The water resources of river basins across the world are declining in quality and quantity. Because of this, the services that they provide to society such as safe drinking water, habitat for biodiversity or places for spiritual and recreational use, are increasingly constrained.

River basin resources are affected by the ever-increasing demand of population growth, as well as a lack of political and community understanding of the value and service that clean water and healthy river systems provide. River systems are complex in nature, not only biophysically and spatially, but also because they sit in complex social systems with highly diverse stakeholder values, needs and cultures.

By guiding policy and behaviour change the IWC works towards the protection of waterways values and ecological communities, and has become a world portal for river and aquatic ecosystem health in its role as host of the Asia–Pacific Knowledge Hub for Healthy Rivers and Aquatic Ecosystems.

Knowledge Hub for Healthy Rivers and Aquatic Ecosystems

The IWC and 15 knowledge partners host the Healthy Rivers Hub for the Asia–Pacific Water Forum’s (APWF) network of regional water knowledge hubs. Through this, we disseminate Australia’s best practice and regional and international expertise on the management and protection of healthy rivers, and the aquatic ecosystems that depend on them. We also learn from the great body of knowledge already existing in the Asia–Pacific region.

The Healthy Rivers Hub integrates social, political, economic and other environmental drivers into its primary focus of the protection of river health and aquatic ecosystems. It builds relationships, knowledge, networks and capacity by addressing four core knowledge-sharing components:

shared knowledge and experience
applied research programs
expertise for specific healthy rivers issues
education, training and capacity development.

Key partners

Example project

River Health and Environmental Flows in China

The Australia–China Environment Development Partnership (ACEDP) is a five-year Australian Government AusAID and People’s Republic of China initiative. The largest project under ACEDP is the two-year, AU $3.4 million River Health and Environmental Flows in China Project (RH&EF). It aims to trial and adapt international approaches to river health and environmental flows assessments for the China scenario.

Tributary of the Pearl River, Li River, one of the project sites

RH&EF focuses on three pilot sites in the Yellow River, Pearl River and the Liao River Basins. Managed by the IWC, the project involves the Ministry of Water Resources (MWR) and the Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP), as well as three agencies under MWR and one agency under MEP.

Impacts

This project trialled international approaches to river health monitoring and environmental flow determination in the Pearl, Yellow and Liao Rivers to determine their wider application in China. It also led to the development of a draft national framework for Environmental Flows and Ecological Restoration, which includes policy mechanisms, and helped to build the capacity of a group of technicians in China to develop and conduct river health and environmental flow assessments, and to train other Chinese technicians.

Key partners

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