Connected and flowing: a renewable future for rivers, climate and people
A recently launched report from World Wildlife Foundation (WWF) and The Nature Conservancy demonstrates how the renewable energy revolution can help address the world’s climate and energy challenge without affecting rivers and the diverse benefits they provide to people and nature. The report Connected and Flowing: a renewable future for rivers, the climate and people argues that, today, countries can power their growth with grids that are low carbon, low cost, and low impact on people and nature. Along with supporting the richest freshwater biodiversity, healthy free-flowing rivers deliver a number of critical ecosystem services. They support freshwater fish stocks that improve food security for hundreds of millions of people, deliver sediment that keeps deltas above rising seas, provide nutrients to fertilise floodplain fields and support coastal fisheries, and mitigate the impact of extreme floods, storms and droughts.
