NEW DELHI — Climate change, pollution, over extraction of
water and development are killing some of the world’s most famous rivers
including China’s Yangtze, India’s Ganges and Africa’s Nile, conservation group
WWF said on Tuesday.
At the global launch of its report "World’s Top 10 Rivers at
Risk", the Geneva-based group said many rivers could dry out, affecting hundreds
of millions of people and killing unique aquatic life.
"If these rivers die, millions will lose their livelihoods,
biodiversity will be destroyed on a massive scale, there will be less fresh
water and agriculture, resulting in less food security," said Ravi Singh,
secretary-general of WWF-India.
The report, launched ahead of ‘World Water Day’ on Thursday,
also cited the Rio Grande in the United States, the Mekong and Indus in Asia,
Europe’s Danube, La Plata in South America and Australia’s Murray-Darling as in
need of greater protection.
Rivers are the world’s main source of fresh water and WWF
says about half of the available supply is already being used up.
Dams have destroyed habitats and cut rivers off from their
flood plains, while climate change could affect the seasonal water flows that
feed them, the report said.
Fish populations, the top source of protein and overall life
support for hundreds of thousands of communities worldwide, are also being
threatened, it found.
The Yangtze basin is one of the most polluted rivers in the
world because of decades of heavy industrialization, damming and huge influxes
of sediment from land conversion.
Climate change, including higher temperatures, also means
devastating consequences for fishery productivity, water supply and political
security in Africa’s arid Nile basin.
The Ganges basin makes up almost a third of India’s land area
and one in twelve people in the world depend on this river for activities such
as fishing and farming, the WWF said.
The river, sacred for Hindus, is at the center of many of the
country’s social and religious traditions.
It is home to more than 140 fish species, 90 amphibian
species and the endangered Ganges river dolphin.
But WWF said tributaries flowing into the Ganges are drying
up as barrages divert large amounts of water for irrigation.
Water quality is also deteriorating and climate change will
have a serious impact as glaciers — which account for 30 to 40 percent of the
Ganges water — retreat.
"The Ganges is our power, it is our purity as it washes all our sins away and
we must do something to save it," said Hindu priest Akhilesh Kumar Sharma from
the northern town of Narora on the banks of the Ganges.
