Water insecurity is a defining feature of the Anthropocene, with degraded water quality and unreliable flows putting the well‐being of upstream and downstream communities, both human and aquatic, at risk. Within this context, the protection of drinking water at its source – ‘source water protection’ – is growing as a complementary water security solution to conventional built infrastructure, particularly but not only to address non‐point source pollution.
An assessment of the likely source catchments of 4000 cities, supplying water to as many as 1.7 billion city dwellers, found that 85% of the total area of the catchments overlaps with freshwater ecoregions of high biodiversity value. Source water protection could contribute to conserving important freshwater biodiversity elements in these catchments, through activities such as land protection, restoration, and agricultural and ranching best‐management practices.
Empirical evidence supporting the benefits of these types of activities to freshwater species and ecosystems is sparse, especially when considered at the scales required to achieve meaningful conservation objectives. This article explores the potential of source water protection to deliver freshwater conservation benefits, and solutions are proposed to address the challenges related to evidence gaps, trade‐offs, and financing.
The broader opportunity for leveraging water security investments for biodiversity conservation, and the overall efficiencies that may accrue from optimizing for multiple benefits simultaneously, are discussed in the context of global frameworks such as the Sustainable Development Goals.
When do indigenous and other negatively affected populations mobilize against fossil fuel companies? We revisit social movement theory and environmental literature to identify three factors that may plausibly shape mobilization decisions of negatively affected populations—democratic institutions, community perceptions of government shaped by land tenure security, and firm attributes. Democratic institutions afford more opportunities for affected populations to air their grievances through protests than non-democratic ones. Land tenure security guaranteed by government contributes to the perception among affected populations that their objectives are better achieved through government mediation than protests. Characteristics of fossil fuel firms, such as state ownership, also shape activist perceptions of government credibility as a mediator. By analyzing fifty-seven countries over the period 1990 to 2013, we find that democracy and state ownership of fossil fuel firms are positively associated with protests, whereas land tenure security is negatively associated.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.