Species

Lower Mekong River Basin

Freshwater Key Biodiversity Areas in the Lower Mekong River Basin: Informing species conservation and investment planning in freshwater ecosystems

Lower Mekong River Key Biodiversity Areas Project Photo: IUCN Freshwater Biodiversity Unit 2018

Location: The Lower Mekong River Basin (Laos PDR, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam)

Status: Complete

Project Partners: IUCN Asia Regional Office

Donors: Financial support for this work was provided by the Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies. Additional support was provided by the Building River Dialogue and Governance (BRIDGE) project financed by the Water Diplomacy Programme of the Swiss Agency for Development Cooperation (SDC) and Synchronicity Earth.

 

 

 

Background: The Lower Mekong river basin supports a high diversity of aquatic species. Many of these species provide direct (e.g. fisheries) and indirect (e.g. water purification) benefits to people, supporting local economies and livelihoods across the basin. Freshwater ecosystems are however undervalued and receive insufficient funding, political attention and protection. Developing interest and funding for freshwater species conservation is crucial for “bending the curve” (Mace et al. 2018) to reduce and ultimately reverse current freshwater biodiversity declines. Given the limited resources available for pursuing biodiversity conservation targets efforts should therefore focus on those species and areas most in need, and for which conservation actions are most likely to yield positive outcomes.

In 2018, the IUCN Asia Regional Office, in partnership with the IUCN Freshwater Biodiversity Unit, received funds from the Margaret A. Cargill Foundation, the Building River Dialogue and Governance (BRIDGE) project financed by the Water Diplomacy Programme of the Swiss Agency for Development Cooperation (SDC), and Synchronicity Earth, to identify and validate freshwater KBAs in the Lower Mekong River basin using the newly published Global Standard for the Identification of Key Biodiversity Areas (IUCN 2016).

The KBAs identified will help guide investment decisions on conservation and sustainable management of freshwater biodiversity in the region. A site-based approach on its own will not, however, protect all species and needs to be combined with conservation action at the catchment scale. For example, migratory fish species of the Mekong system may benefit from protection of breeding sites and deep pool refugia in the dry season, but also require catchment scale actions to address more widespread threats such as from land use and barriers to movement throughout the catchment. This combined site and catchment approach is particularly important for freshwater ecosystems where the high levels of connectivity mean that impacts to a site may originate long distances upstream or downstream.

Project Objectives: The primary goals of the project were to:

  1. Guide conservation investment priorities by identifying and validating freshwater KBAs in the Lower Mekong river basin through applying the KBA Global Standard (IUCN 2016);
  2. Use the new KBA dataset to inform performance standards and environmental safeguard policies of financial institutions and the private sector to avoid or minimise the impacts of their operations in and around these critical sites for freshwater biodiversity, and;
  3. Use the KBA dataset as a scientific basis for potential development and expansion of existing protected area networks in the Lower Mekong river basin to better represent threatened and geographically restricted freshwater species.

Project Activities:

  • Desktop analysis: Data previously collated through the IUCN Red List assessments were compiled for the following freshwater taxonomic groups: i) fishes; ii) molluscs; iii) odonates (dragonflies and damselflies); iv) decapods (crabs and shrimps) and; v) selected aquatic plants. All river/lake sub-catchments in the Lower Mekong River basin that contain potential KBA trigger species (species meeting the KBA criteria and thresholds) were identified using the species distribution maps assembled. In this way, maps were created to show the numbers of potential trigger species per sub-catchment.
  • KBA validation and delineation workshop The KBA identification process is a highly inclusive, consultative and bottom-up exercise. A KBA validation and delineation workshop was held in Bangkok, Thailand in September 2018 in collaboration with the relevant stakeholders (species experts and conservation NGOs) from the Lower Mekong river basin. The aim of the workshop was to gather regional and international experts to confirm that the proposed sub-catchments meet the KBA criteria and to then derive KBA site boundaries that are biologically relevant yet practical for management. The workshop participants were asked to complete the minimum documentation requirements for each KBA.

Results: The project has identified 18 important river, lake and wetland systems as priority sites for conservation action in the Lower Mekong River basin. It is important to highlight however that these 18 freshwater KBAs are only a subset of all potential important areas. The identification and delineation of KBAs is necessarily a fluid and ongoing process responding to the provision of new information and a constantly changing environment, and thus it is expected that this current freshwater KBA dataset for the Lower Mekong river basin will continue to be refined and updated. Ultimately the process for identification of KBAs should be nationally driven such that all relevant parties can be directly involved, especially to facilitate any recommendations to change boundaries of existing Protected Areas or KBAs. It is therefore recommended that, where not already established, KBA national focal points and national KBA Coordination Groups be established in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos PDR and Thailand to build upon this foundation for site-based protection of freshwater species. The work presented in this report represents the first steps in taking this process forwards and it provides a baseline data set to inform future KBA designations. 

Full results and recommendations are detailed in the full project report, which is available to the right of this page under Downloads.

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