Freshwater ecosystems: research, policy and applications
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EDITORIAL
Freshwater ecosystems: research, policy and applications András Báldi1 · Ágnes Vári1 Received: 2 September 2020 / Accepted: 31 October 2020 / Published online: 19 November 2020 © The Author(s) 2020
Safeguarding water is a key challenge of the twenty-first century. Freshwater is vital for our socio-economic development, food and energy provisioning, recreation, biodiversity and to maintain ecosystems and their services supporting our well-being. Water is highlighted in the sustainable development goals (SDGs) of the United Nations Development Program that give an agenda for humanity until 2030, in SDG 6 (https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/water -and-sanitation/). This goal has six targets regarding drinking water, sanitation, pollution, water-use efficiency, water resource management and aquatic ecosystems, in which significant progress must be made by 2030. These targets also indicate the large diversity of freshwater-related issues that range from human health and governance to ecosystem services. The key role of freshwater and the strong linkages of socio-economic development to water resources are acknowledged in The Global Risk Report 2020 in which the World Economic Forum (https://www.wefor um.org/ repor ts/the-global-risks-repor t-2020) assessed what risks have large impact and/or large likelihood. Water crises are in the top ten risks in terms of both impact and likelihood. However, water use is still within the planetary boundaries. The planetary boundary approach assesses the boundaries of nine environmental systems, within which humanity can survive and maintain development (https://www.stock holmresilience.org/research/planet ary-boundaries.html). One of the nine systems is freshwater use, and it is within the boundaries both globally (Steffen et al. 2015) and at the European scale (EEA 2019). Importantly, this implies that we do not need to take drastic steps to reduce water usage, in contrast to the climate regulating system. It suffices to maintain the current level. This is valid at the global level, and of course, there are big differences among regions and * Ágnes Vári [email protected] 1
Lendület Ecosystem Services Research Group, ELKH Centre for Ecological Research, 2‑4 Alkotmány utca, Vácrátót 2163, Hungary
countries. Thus, appropriate strategies are badly needed to maintain the current level of freshwater use while achieving a distribution that meets all needs. This is the point where scientific advice and evidence-based approaches must have a strong role, not only to meet the requirements above, but also to consider and integrate the predictions of the expected increase in environmental uncertainties, like flash floods, drastic droughts and heat waves (Kron et al. 2019). Such calls for more evidence and more scientific input abound in the literature. However, these have no real effect, as they are too vague to initiate any effective steps. Thus, to be operative, we have to (1) map the knowledge gaps; (2) provide a foresight to assess future ch
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