IUCN, Water and Nature Initiative (WANI)

An environmental flow is the water regime provided within a river, wetland or coastal zone to maintain ecosystems and their benefits where there are competing water uses and where flows are regulated. Pioneering efforts in South Africa, Australia and the United States have shown that the process to establish them poses great challenges.

Water ecosystems have long been perceived by decision makers as having little value simply because their economic value is poorly understood and rarely articulated. Calculating the economic value of an ecosystem is a means of providing information which can be used to make better and more informed choices about how resources are managed, used and allocated.

An environmental flow is the water regime provided within a river, wetland or coastal zone to maintain ecosystems and their benefits where there are competing water uses and where flows are regulated. Pioneering efforts in South Africa, Australia and the United States have shown that the process to establish them poses great challenges.

Biodiversity within inland water ecosystems in Eastern Africa is highly diverse and of great importance to livelihoods and economies, however, development activities are not always compatible with the conservation of this diversity and it is poorly represented in the development planning process. One of the main reasons is the lack of readily available information on the status and distribution of inland water taxa.

Value is a practical guide that explains the most important steps and techniques for the valuation of ecosystem services, and the incorporation of its results in decision making. It explains, step by step, how to generate persuasive arguments for more sustainable and equitable development decisions in water resources management.

The Pangani River Basin covers an area of about 43,650 km2, mostly in Tanzania with approximately 5% in Kenya. The Basin contains a wide array of resources of which water and arable land are arguably the most important to its 3.7 million Tanzanian inhabitants. There is a diversity of interests in the Basin, and these are able to wield various degrees of power as they seek to lay claim to its resources.

Climate change is here and will be with us for the long term. The challenge facing water professionals is how to make decisions in the face of this new uncertainty. This book outlines a new management approach that moves beyond technical quick fixes towards a more adaptive style that is inclusive and innovative. Only by thinking, working and learning together can we tackle the impacts on water resources and uncertainties induced by climate change.