Hisham Boujgout
A new scientific study, published in the journal Nature, found that out of the 246 large rivers in the world, only about 37% are uninterrupted, while the rest of the water collides with dams and large reservoirs built by humans.
The first study of its kind
The study was carried out by 34 researchers from McGill University, Canada, and funded by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), analyzing data on 12 million km of rivers running across the world.
This study is the first in this field, and can become a reference for decision-makers and researchers for sustainable solutions in the exploitation of rivers and oceans that are threatened with extinction.
Of the 91 rivers, more than 1,000 kilometers long, there are only 21 rivers that still maintain their nature, and are found in the Amazon and the Congo basin, or in the Arctic.
The study also found that the climate change factor has a very negative impact on the conservation of ecological services of rivers, because the governments of the world have chosen hydropower as clean energy and production depends on the construction of dams.
About 60 thousand dams
MacGanther, the lead author of the study, told Al Jazeera.net that there are about 60,000 large dams cutting the rivers of the world, and another 3,700 dams are in the pipeline.
These dams have diverted rivers from their former nature, both in terms of their flow and in terms of their interconnectedness, depriving millions of people of the resources they provide, such as fish and many ecological services, such as reducing the risk of flooding.
"What is required today is to monitor these rivers and their natural course, especially in connection with each other, so that we can have a good knowledge of the roles they previously played and what we should do in the future.
Because the construction of dams and water reservoirs that cut river flow is very vital to modern man, today it is necessary to find intelligent and sustainable solutions to manage these rivers by constructing dams in good places or even demolishing existing dams that have cut down and, if possible, connected rivers.
"We are required to think well and wisely about finding sustainable solutions in river management. We have a large and important database for all the rivers of the world. This is a good entry point that will contribute to finding solutions to preserve these rivers and their ecological services," he said.
10 years of work
"This study is the result of ten years of work, and I think we've done a lot of work by collecting data about these rivers because they will allow us to create a digital map of millions of kilometers of rivers that we have," said Professor Bernard Lennard of McGill University and one of the researchers involved in the study. God will be on our planet, and this will allow us in the last to study the changes made by man on these rivers.
"We are not calling for a halt to the economic growth of the countries of the world, but we call for intelligent solutions that contribute to harmonious coexistence between humans and these rivers, such as more reliance on wind energy and solar energy generation."