How do healthy rivers benefit society? A review of the evidence
This working paper provides a synthesis of existing evidence regarding the relationship between river health and the benefits for society and presents a conceptual framework to explain the links between rivers and social, economic and strategic benefits. Strategic benefits contribute to national and trans-national interests and are often highly politicised. They include among others disaster risk reduction (DRR) and climate resilience.
Regarding the strategic benefits potentially derived from rivers with respect to DRR and climate resilience, the paper explains that:
- Healthy wetlands can help mitigate the impacts of flooding, including in urban areas, and river catchments can play a role in drought mitigation.
- River ecosystems (e.g. wetlands) have some natural capacity to buffer against climate variability and change.
This document is available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.