Perspectives on Protecting African freshwater Ecosystems in the Anthropocene

Abstract

Our announcement of this Special Medal Issue in 2020 outlined the growing and urgent concern for the state of Earth’s inland waters, and called on authors to submit papers that would address one or more of the following topics and, importantly, links between them: • water quantity: flow, inundation, groundwater recharge • water quality: dissolved and particulate matter, temperature • sediments, geomorphic structure, hydraulics: load, extraction, channel form and function, habitats • freshwater species: natural community structure, life cycles, exploitation, poaching • non-native species: invasions, habitat destruction, imbalance, escalation to pest proportions • connectivity: the movement of water, sediments and biota • livelihoods: social and cultural dependence on freshwater ecosystems • governance: socio-economic drivers of degradation, balancing the three pillars of sustainable development (social equity, ecological integrity, economic wealth). We sought papers from freshwater, resource economic and social scientists; water managers; governments; legislators; and other relevant specialists, encouraging co-authorship from more than one discipline in order to move closer to the realities of managing water ecosystems and addressing the requirements of their users. We hoped for information on the collaboration between disciplines, the use of knowledge as well as data, and how technical information can be conveyed in a form accessible to a wide range of stakeholders. The call for papers resulted in submission of papers from across southern Africa. Several of these did not address the science-management interface in any formal way and, because they had considerable merit, were referred to one of the scheduled issues of AJAS. The papers presented in the Special Medal Issue all have a link through to management, albeit stronger in some cases than in others. They progress our thinking regarding the management and sustainable use of freshwater ecosystem, but do they go far enough? We will return to this later. The papers have been arranged in three themes: freshwater ecosystem stressors; river basin and freshwater ecosystem management; and a case study. freshwater ecosystem stressors