My thanks to Indonesia for your leadership in driving the sustainable lake management resolution passed at the 5th session of the UN Environment Assembly in Nairobi last year. This resolution is crucial to tackle the threats facing lakes and wetlands. As a result of the triple planetary crisis – the crisis of climate change, of nature and biodiversity loss, and of pollution and waste – freshwater ecosystems have lost significant extent and biodiversity. Protecting lake ecosystems is essential to tackling the triple crisis.
I see three key areas for action.
First, in committing to the resolution on Sustainable Lake Management, we look to Member States to put more of their lakes under protection, in a similar vein to Ramsar sites. This would help to ensure that Member States stand by their commitments to achieve the SDGs and the Global Biodiversity Framework.
Second, we need to increase transboundary cooperation to protect, sustainably manage and restore lakes, wetlands and inland freshwater ecosystems. International collaboration on transboundary rivers such as the Rhine and the Mekong River Basin show that this can be done. We can do the same for major lakes, and I am pleased to see commitments to African Great Lakes. The UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration and the Lakes portal offer know-how on sustainable management and meaningful action that can help to grow transboundary collaboration.
And third, we need to increase investment in nature-based solutions. We have seen that investment in nature-based solutions works; for example, by using lakes to cool cities, as is happening in Toronto. But investment is also needed to enforce water resource management rules and regulations.
Sustainable management of lakes is essential to the Water Action Agenda and to ending the triple planetary crisis. We must all commit and re-double our efforts to ensuring the health and extent of these key ecosystems. So I thank you for your support and look forward to hearing about the outcomes of this important deliberation.
