Around the world, freshwater habitats are among the ecosystems that are facing rapid degradation. Countries and communities are lagging behind in the battle to preserve life-sustaining ecosystems from a variety of threats including pollution, water diversion, dam-building and over-exploitation of natural resources.

Substantial invaluable knowledge, insights, and best-practices for freshwater ecosystem conservation and management are available. Local communities, researchers, development agencies, and governments are constantly shaping and reshaping strategies, institutional arrangements, and physical measures to maintain and enhance various ecosystem services in long-term ways. These insights and experiences are extremely significant at the global scale. Due to country-based design of resource management, fragmentation in documentation methodologies, and the lack of a pan-regional platform for knowledge dissemination, many contemporary practices and insights are not available, or used, at global scales.

The session will focus on sharing lessons learned from specific countries across different continents on best practices (success stories), barriers, and empowering feasible courses of action in freshwater ecosystem conservation and management for sustainable consumption, disaster risk reduction, and climate change adaptation.