When a group of Olympic triathletes plunged into the Seine River last month, it marked a watershed moment for the iconic French waterway.
Swimming in the Seine had been banned since 1923 due in part to pollution. But in the lead up to the Olympic Games, France spent US$1.5 billion on a cleanup operation, with the long-term goal of once again allowing Parisians to swim in the river.
The Seine’s water quality ebbed and flowed throughout the games, with officials saying it will be 2025 before recreational bathers can dive in.
But its rebound has sparked hope for many of the world’s other urban waterways, which have been hammered in recent years by pollution, climate change and the over abstraction of water.
“Paris has shown that it is possible to bring even the most polluted rivers back to life,” said Dianna Kopansky, Head of the Freshwater and Wetlands Unit of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). “But if we’re to ward off a looming freshwater crisis, the world is going to need a lot more success stories like this.”
A compendium of UNEP reports released this week found that 50 per cent of countries currently have one or more type of water-related ecosystem – rivers, lakes, wetlands, aquifers – in a state of degradation. To count as degraded, water bodies have to be polluted or have low water levels. The report is part of an effort to monitor progress on UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6, which calls for everyone on Earth to have access to clean water and sanitation by 2030.
The degradation of freshwater bodies, the report found, has had a profound effect on communities around the world, imperiling drinking water supplies, risking food shortages and hampering hydro-electric production.
By 2025, 1.8 billion people are likely to face what the Food and Agriculture Organization calls absolute water scarcity and two-thirds of the global population is expected to be grappling with water stress.
Water pollution is often dire in urban areas, which have long grappled with the issue, from the leaded pipes of ancient Rome, to the Great Stink on London’s Thames River in the 1850s to the infamous immolation of the United States’ Cuyahoga River.
The new reports from UNEP found that it is possible to buck such historical trends. But countries must ensure degraded ecosystems are prioritized in protection and restoration policies and plans. Nations should also take a more holistic approach to protecting water bodies, addressing threats like pollution and climate change together, experts say. Also key, is ensuring freshwater ecosystems remain connected.
In recent years, many countries have begun to embrace this approach, giving some of the world’s most famous waterways a glow up.
India is nine years into a US$4 billion push to clean the famously polluted Ganges River. London, currently relying on a leak-prone 150-year-old sewer system, has invested in building a 25 kilometres Super Sewer. The Hudson River, which skirts New York City, is rebounding following a decades-long effort to clean up chemical contamination. And last year, dozens of countries launched the Freshwater Challenge, a drive to revive 300,000 kilometres of rivers and 350 million hectares of wetlands, the largest restoration push of its kind.
The Seine cleanup, which is in its ninth year, is especially ambitious. French officials laid thousands of kilometres of pipes and installed a network of underground pumps and tanks to prevent untreated sewage and rainwater from entering the river. A key part of France’s efforts has been undertaking regular ambient water quality monitoring. This has been essential to keep efforts on track and ascertain safety of the water, which is also a key finding from one of UNEP’s reports that encourages countries to incorporate citizen science into their national monitoring programmes.
Earlier this summer ultramarathoner and clean water advocate Mina Guli completed a 30-day, 830-kilometre run along the length of the Seine ahead of the 2024 Olympic Games, to raise awareness about the world’s looming water crisis and the urgent need to restore rivers.
“For too long, we have undervalued and overlooked our rivers, treating them as little more than pipes for water and overflows for sewage,” said Guli. “Healthy rivers are central to water and food security, reversing nature loss, adapting to the worsening impacts of climate change and driving sustainable development.”
Guli, who is now planning a campaign to run along 20 rivers across six continents, is moderating a UNEP-led event this week at Stockholm’s World Water Week, a global gathering that explores freshwater-related issues.
Countering pollution in rivers, which are some of the most diverse ecosystems on the planet, is a key component of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework a global agreement designed to protect and restore the natural world. Riverine restoration is a key element of achieving Targets 2 (Areas Restored) and 3 (Areas Protected).
A third new report from UNEP, which also tracked progress on Sustainable Development Goal 6, found that many countries must improve how they manage their water resources. It said that by 2030, more than 100 countries, home to 3.3 billion people, are unlikely to have governance frameworks that can balance the demand for water and cope with pressures like climate change. These figures highlight the urgent need for countries to embrace the recently approved UN system-wide strategy on water and sanitation, say experts.
“There is no single solution to the water crisis that we’re facing,” said UNEP’s Kopansky. “Improving the quality of river basins is a long-term challenge that requires a well-coordinated and collaborative approach. We’re going to need to massively scale up our efforts if we’re to ensure that everyone, everywhere has the freshwater they need.”
UNEP is the custodian agency of three indicators under Sustainable Development Goal 6, which cover ambient water quality, integrated water resources management and on freshwater ecosystems. The organization recently released the findings of a global data drive that examined how the world is progressing on those indicators and how freshwater ecosystems can help deliver on the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
The newly launched Community Action for Freshwater Initiative, a partnership led by UNEP and Rotary International, aims to mobilize Rotary’s more than 1 million global community actors to deliver on the freshwater data and action through citizen science engagement.
