THE CENTRAL IMPORTANCE OF WATER IN SETTING A TRANSACTIONAL GLOBAL CONSERVATION AGENDA

Global politics has entered a more transactional era. Although ecosystem services provide valid economic arguments for conserving biodiversity, these arguments do not resonate with politicians focused on tangible, short-term benefits for their electorate. We need more cogent arguments for conserving large areas of land that provide transactional benefits to voters. Climate change falls short; it is a secondary threat to biodiversity and has limited political support, except when inclement weather directly impacts humans through floods, hurricanes or droughts. All these disasters are fundamentally linked to water Paradoxically, the global water supply is becoming increasingly tenuous and variable, yet it remains intimately connected to the presence of forests and large montane areas. Developing an International Convention on Water would indirectly create an agenda that leads to the protection of a significant proportion of the Earth’s terrestrial areas. The majority of protected areas lie above 1,000 metres. They need to be managed in ways that conserve biodiversity while ensuring they supply a continuous supply of clean freshwater for the planet’s human populations and domestic livestock. Water could then flow from these areas into those with more intensive agriculture, industry, and the low-lying cities where most of the Earth’s human population lives.