Biodiversity = Clean Water = Human Health

Source: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 2013, David Coates and Jacquie Grekin, CBD,   "The Youth Guide to Biodiversity" 1st Edition (Chapter 7) Youth and United Nations Global Alliance. Reproduced with permission.

Chapter 7. Verbatim.

All life depends on water. Human beings need two to three litres of clean drinking water a day. Without food we can survive weeks. But without water, we can die of dehydration in as little as two days. More than one billion people in the world lack access to safe drinking water, and some two million people die each year of diarrhoea caused by unclean water, 70 percent of these are children.

Healthy ecosystems contribute to providing clean water supplies. Many cities, for example, obtain their water supply from protected areas outside the cities.

Threats To Freshwater Biodiversity

Biodiversity is being lost more rapidly in freshwater ecosystems than in any other ecosystem type.

• Some 20 percent of freshwater fish species are considered extinct or threatened, a far greater percentage than for marine fishes. 

• 44 percent of the 1 200 waterbird populations with known trends are in decline (compared to 27.5 percent of seabirds being threatened). 

• 42 percent of amphibian species populations are declining.  

• Among groups of animals that live in many different areas, those species living in association with freshwater tend to show the greatest level of threat (including, for example, butterflies, mammals and reptiles). 

• On average, over half of the natural wetland area has probably been lost in most developed countries. In Canada, for example, more than 80 percent of the wetlands near major urban centres have been converted for agricultural use or urban expansion; in many others, the loss is higher than 90 percent (e.g. New Zealand).