淡水生物多样性保护在科学文献中受到了广泛关注,并最终在全球生物多样性框架及其2030年相关目标等政策框架中得到认可。这是重要的进展。尽管如此,淡水物种继续面临高度危险和广泛的生态系统退化。2020年提出的紧急恢复计划(ERP)包括六项措施,旨在“弯曲”淡水生物多样性丧失的曲线。如果它们得到广泛采用和充分支持。我们审查的证据表明,对淡水生物多样性的持续和新出现的威胁的综合强度已经变得如此严重,以至于目前和预计的努力,保护和恢复内陆水生态系统可能不足以避免未来几十年生物多样性的大量损失。特别是,气候变化,其复杂而有害的影响,将挫败防止已经受到多种威胁影响的淡水生态系统生物多样性损失的尝试。这些威胁之间的相互作用将限制人口的恢复,并加剧导致局部甚至全球灭绝的下降,特别是在退化或支离破碎的生态系统中的低生存能力种群中。除了气候变化所代表的障碍,我们确定了其他几个绝对缺乏淡水的地区,科学信息或预测能力不足,以及广泛未能减轻人为压力,有可能对淡水生物多样性的恢复设定限制。通过许多广泛分散的地方行动,集中在淡水生物多样性高和威胁严重的地区,迅速大规模地实施企业资源规划,加上加强异地保护工作,在人们知之甚少的气候日益不确定的未来,保护本地淡水生物多样性将是必要的,紧急和相互作用的威胁变得更具影响力。但是ERP的实施必须伴随着改善水的措施,人类的能源和粮食安全-不进一步损害淡水生态系统的状况。不幸的是,遏制气候变化等广泛公认的环境挑战的政策执行不足,并不能激发人们对ERP可能成功的信心。在世界许多地方,人类世的未来似乎肯定会包括更长的时期,绝对缺乏未污染的地表径流,这将不可避免地被人类占用。除非社会对保护淡水生物多样性的认识和承诺发生阶段性变化,以及阻止气候变化的必要行动,实施保护淡水生物多样性的既定方法可能不足以防止持续的生态系统退化和物种丧失。
Freshwater biodiversity conservation has received substantial attention in the scientific literature and is finally being recognized in policy frameworks such as the Global Biodiversity Framework and its associated targets for 2030. This is important progress. Nonetheless, freshwater species continue to be confronted with high levels of imperilment and widespread ecosystem degradation. An Emergency Recovery Plan (ERP) proposed in 2020 comprises six measures intended to \"bend the curve\" of freshwater biodiversity loss, if they are widely adopted and adequately supported. We review evidence suggesting that the combined intensity of persistent and emerging threats to freshwater biodiversity has become so serious that current and projected efforts to preserve, protect and restore inland-water ecosystems may be insufficient to avert substantial biodiversity losses in the coming decades. In particular, climate change, with its complex and harmful impacts, will frustrate attempts to prevent biodiversity losses from freshwater ecosystems already affected by multiple threats. Interactions among these threats will limit recovery of populations and exacerbate declines resulting in local or even global extinctions, especially among low-viability populations in degraded or fragmented ecosystems. In addition to impediments represented by climate change, we identify several other areas where the absolute scarcity of fresh water, inadequate scientific information or predictive capacity, and a widespread failure to mitigate anthropogenic stressors, are liable to set limits on the recovery of freshwater biodiversity. Implementation of the ERP rapidly and at scale through many widely dispersed local actions focused on regions of high freshwater biodiversity and intense threat, together with an intensification of ex-situ conservation efforts, will be necessary to preserve native freshwater biodiversity during an increasingly uncertain climatic future in which poorly understood, emergent and interacting threats have become more influential. But implementation of the ERP must be accompanied by measures that will improve water, energy and food security for humans - without further compromising the condition of freshwater ecosystems. Unfortunately, the inadequate political implementation of policies to arrest widely recognized environmental challenges such as climate change do not inspire confidence about the possible success of the ERP. In many parts of the world, the Anthropocene future seems certain to include extended periods with an absolute scarcity of uncontaminated surface runoff that will inevitably be appropriated by humans. Unless there is a step-change in societal awareness of - and commitment to - the conservation of freshwater biodiversity, together with necessary actions to arrest climate change, implementation of established methods for protecting freshwater biodiversity may not bend the curve enough to prevent continued ecosystem degradation and species loss.