Ganges is one of world’s 10 most polluted rivers

The Ganges, Indus, Yangtze, Salween-Nu and Mekong-Lancang rivers make up half of the WWF’s “top ten” most threatened river basins, which “either already suffer most grievously under the weight of these threats or are bracing for the heaviest impacts,” the organisation said.

Also on the list are the Rio Grande/Rio Bravo and La Plata in Latin America, the Danube in central Europe, the Nile-Lake Victoria in Africa and the Murray-Darling in Australia.

“Nearly everybody in the world lives in a river basin and everybody has a contribution to make” to prevent further environmental damage, the director of WWF’s Global Freshwater Programme Jamie Pittock told AFP.

The threats facing river basins are varied and interlinked, and require holistic policies rather than efforts that target just one aspect but can end up being counterproductive, he said.

For example, “as governments become concerned about climate change reducing water run-off, they build more dams to store more water, which then results in more water being extracted from the rivers and so builds up more ecological problems,” Pittock said. Many governments are also focusing on hydro-electric power plants as a “clean” source of energy, but this means more dams which stem water flows and kill off fish populations, he added.