Overview
The protection and restoration of freshwater ecosystems require developing sustainable, coherent and comprehensive watershed management that re-values, restores, and reconnects watersheds and brings tangible benefits to local and national stakeholders.
Protecting freshwater resources is a cornerstone of environmental sustainability and is vital to human health, economic prosperity, and climate resilience. From mountain headwaters and forested catchments to rivers, wetlands, lakes, groundwater aquifers and eventually coastal and marine ecosystems, freshwater moves through an intricate, interconnected system, known as the hydrological cycle. Along this path, it intersects with agriculture, cities, industry, and natural landscapes, carrying both life and the consequences of how we manage our environment. This means that unsustainable land use, pollution, and resource exploitation in one area can have far-reaching impacts downstream, as well as across sectors.
Globally, freshwater ecosystems are under increasing pressure from poor management, overuse and climate change. Rapid urban and agricultural expansion, extractive industries, and pollution have degraded many of these ecosystems. At the same time, growing water demand from rising populations, weak governance, and inefficient water use has led to widespread destruction, pollution, and the loss of vital ecosystem functions. Climate change further intensifies these threats by disrupting water cycles and exacerbating shortages. The cumulative effects of these pressures are visible across freshwater systems and their receiving coastal waters. It is estimated that only 15 per cent of the world’s wetlands remain and hydrological connectivity within entire watersheds is being fragmented and lost.
In 2024, Member states recognized in the resolution 6/13 of the 6th UN Environment Assembly that the world is not on track, at the current rate of progress, to achieve the water-related Sustainable Development Goals and targets at the global level by 2030. It called for the implementation of integrated water resources management (IWRM) at all levels.
Go Blue Project: Nature-based Wastewater Solution in Mombasa
Watershed management is a vital component of IWRM. Whereas IWRM provides an overarching framework for integrating water use planning across multiple sectors and scales, watershed management focuses on localized interventions within defined hydrological units for local benefit and ecological health.
UNEP-European Commission watershed management project in India and Brazil
The UNEP-European Commission watershed project “Sustainable protection and restoration of rivers, wetlands, and lakes through integrated, sustainable watershed management planning in Brazil and India” seeks to build on established integrated water resources management approaches and home in on watershed management at the basin level to improve people’s lives.
Watershed management at the basin level is key to improving people’s well-being by safeguarding healthy ecosystems, strengthening resilience to climate change, and ensuring sustainable access to safe drinking water and sanitation for all. It also underpins livelihoods such as agriculture, while respecting and valuing the religious, cultural, and recreational practices that matter to communities. By managing the watershed as a connected system, we foster long-term environmental health and socioeconomic stability for present and future generations.
The project is based on the premise that all freshwater ecosystems – rivers, lakes, bogs, mires, swamps, fens and groundwater – are interconnected and underpin planetary health and human well-being.
The project focuses on the Araguaia-Tocantins Basin in Brazil and the Ramganga Basin in India. It aims to create a replicable, and scalable, approach to watershed management that is sustainable, and that re-values, restores and reconnects watersheds, while contributing to advancing international environmental agreements, such as the Sustainable Developments Goals, Climate Change Nationally Determined Contributions and the Convention on Biodiversity National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans. It runs from March 2024 to August 2027.
The project uses integrated and participatory approaches, bringing all stakeholders together to discuss water-energy-food-ecosystems nexus challenges within each basin and sub-basin, as well as to assess the scale and sources of pollution, groundwater depletion, flood risk and potential climate change impacts.
Freshwater ecosystems provide water for food production and drinking, mitigate floods and drought, and hold cultural and spiritual value. However, industrialization and climate impacts have taken a toll on these high value ecosystems. Excessive demands on freshwater resources from growing populations, coupled with poor governance and the exploitative and wasteful use of water resources, have resulted in their destruction, pollution, widespread degradation, and loss of function. Protection and restoration of these ecosystems will help build water resilience – a key aim of the project.
The project will involve extensive consultation and co-creation with stakeholders, including local and national governments, private enterprises and local and indigenous communities. Gender and diversity inclusion will be an important focus of the project both before and during implementation of watershed management plans.
A significant component of the project will be to mobilize sustainable financing by implementing priority watershed management activities. The lessons learned in Brazil and India will be used to create a generalized model and associated guidance to assist in creating future watershed management plans across the globe.
This project will support global efforts to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 6, in particular targets 6.3.2 (water quality), 6.5.1 (integrated water resources management), and 6.6.1 (protection of water-related ecosystems). UNEP, together with the Ramsar Convention, serves as the global custodian for these indicators.
-
Brazil
The project aims to strengthen integrated and sustainable watershed management in the Alto Araguaia Basin in Brazil. This is through enhancing water governance, improving ecosystem resilience and promoting sustainable development in one of Brazil’s most ecologically and economically significant regions.
Coordinated by UNEP and implemented by The Nature Conservancy – Brazil, with financing from the EC, the initiative focuses on strengthening institutional capacity, supporting Nature-based Solutions (NbS), and developing a model that can be replicated in other basins in Brazil and globally.
The project responds to the critical environmental and socio-economic importance of the Alto Araguaia Basin, which is in the Cerrado biome; home to 25% of Brazil’s biodiversity and 60% of its agricultural production, and which forms an essential ecological corridor with the Amazon. Despite this importance, key headwaters face increasing anthropogenic pressures, which make integrated governance and restoration interventions urgent.
To address these challenges, the project is structured around four interconnected objectives which are:
- Developing a replicable watershed governance model
- Implementing NbS for watershed restoration together with local farmers
- Strengthening the Upper Araguaia Watershed governance and support watershed management plans
- Facilitating knowledge sharing within and beyond the watershed to support scaling and replication of best practices.
-
India
The project aims to advance integrated and sustainable watershed management planning in the Ramganga River Watershed. It focuses on demonstrating integrated, nature-based, and community-led approaches to strengthen basin-level planning, as well as ecosystem resilience in the Ganga Basin. Implemented in the Delha River sub-basin – a 120km tributary of the Ramganga that spans Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh – and the Kalewala wetland, the project addresses key water management challenges in an area where 70% of land is used for agriculture, water is heavily diverted for irrigation, and ecological pressures affect both river stretches and connected wetlands.
The initiative aims to showcase how nested watershed plans at basin, district and city levels can be operationalised in practice, and in alignment with the Government of India’s Ganga rejuvenation vision and the Ganga Authority Order of 2016. It combines technical agreements, community engagement, and pilot interventions that can later be scaled across the Basin.
Activities are being organised around three core objectives, which are:
- Implementing NbS for key challenges in the Delha River Basin, including basin scans, wetland and stream mapping, and stakeholder engagement.
- Reviving and co-managing the Kalewala Wetland, with community involvement, wetland health assessments, and improved water practices.
- Developing SoPs for co-management and NbS, enabling replication across the Ramganga and Ganga basins.
-
Global
It is anticipated that project activities in both Brazil and India will generate practical models of collective action, build local capacity and document lessons that will feed into global guidance on integrated and sustainable watershed management.
Partners
Led by UNEP and the European Commission, the project will be implemented in Brazil by The Nature Conservancy - Brazil, which has extensive watershed management experience in the country.
In India the implementing partner is WWF-India, which has been working in the Ramganga River Basin since 2013.
This project will support global efforts to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 6, in particular targets 6.3.2 (water quality), 6.5.1 (integrated water resources management), and 6.6.1 (protection of water-related ecosystems). UNEP, together with the Ramsar Convention, serves as the global custodian for these indicators.
Relevant materials
- Webinar Recording: How gender transformative local watershed management links to global water action
- Technical Highlight: How sustainably managing water catchments can benefit people and planet
Related to Watershed Management
Contact
The work of UNEP on fresh water is led by the Freshwater Ecosystems and Wetlands Unit.
