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A watershed moment for healthy watersheds

Nature Sustainability (2023)Cite this article

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The healthy watersheds concept links ecosystem condition with human benefits and helps decision-makers evaluate trade-offs. Implementation requires letting go of technocratic approaches, accounting for ecosystem services, embracing watersheds’ complexity and supporting participatory processes and subsidiarity.

Water has rightly found its place on the global agenda, signalling its foundational importance to food security, economic development, health and well-being. However, the dominant discourse around water is overly simplified and siloed. Framing water issues around water scarcity, for example, can be attention-grabbing, but this leaves out related crises — such as the alarming decline in freshwater biodiversity — and inadvertently marginalizes important issues and stakeholders, particularly in places that may not yet be facing a crisis1,2. As a result, proposed solutions are often reductionist, technocratic and ill-suited to the complex realities most watersheds face3,4. As an alternative, the healthy watersheds concept is being invoked, acknowledging the need for more complex and holistic approaches to address the suite of challenges facing so many freshwater systems5,6. We define a healthy watershed, explain why the concept is both important and timely, and suggest priorities for policymakers and practitioners.

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Fig. 1: An example of the characteristic complexity of a watershed (Rhone River near Culoz, France).
Fig. 2: A framework for watershed health, illustrating its three pillars and principles.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the Pisces Foundation for supporting this work.

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Author notes

  1. Robin Abell

    Present address: The Nature Conservancy, Arlington, VA, USA

  2. Sarah Hauck

    Present address: National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Boulder, CO, USA

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Conservation International, Arlington, VA, USA

    Derek Vollmer, Robin Abell, Maira Bezerra, Ian Harrison, Sarah Hauck, Kashif Shaad & Nicholas Souter

Authors
  1. Derek Vollmer
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  2. Robin Abell
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  3. Maira Bezerra
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  6. Kashif Shaad
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  7. Nicholas Souter
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Correspondence to Derek Vollmer.

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Nature Sustainability thanks Chris Dickens and Aliny Pires for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Vollmer, D., Abell, R., Bezerra, M. et al. A watershed moment for healthy watersheds. Nat Sustain (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-022-01027-y

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