9TH INTERNATIONAL RIVERSYMPOSIUM

摘要

Fresh water from rivers will be in even shorter supply as climate change gathers pace. Increasing temperatures will dramatically impact on the world's great rivers. Combined with population growth and more competition for water resources, rivers are becoming the new political battleground, according to recent international reports published by Princeton University and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). Climate change is now recognised as a real and significant worldwide trend which will present profound challenges to the world's water managers. Predicted changes are likely to fuel calls for a new generation of super-dams and canals to move water round the planet and once-great rivers like the Yellow in China, the Ganges and Indus in India, and the Rio Grande on the border of Mexico and the United States now regularly dry up or clog up, with obvious consequences for aquatic species, and human health and sanitation.