Annual-Report-2019

BIOLOGICAL AND CULTURAL DIVERSITY, AND
FLOW REGIMES - A UNIFYING APPROACH FOR
MANAGING RIVERSCAPES
Human & Social Sciences 2019
100
Dr Rebecca Tharme
LE STUDIUM / Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Research Fellow
Smart Loire Valley General Programme
From: Riverfutures Limited - UK
In residence at: CItés, TERritoires,
Environnement et Sociétés (CITERES) - Tours
Nationality: British
Dates: November 2019 to November 2020
Rebecca Tharme is an international specialist in river
conservation and environmental water management,
with 28 years of experience in multicultural,
interdisciplinary partnerships and research-fordevelopment
projects across Africa, Asia and Latin
America. She holds a PhD in Aquatic Ecology,
University of Cape Town, South Africa, for which she
was awarded the Purcell Prize, as well as a First Class
B.Sc. Honours in Zoology and B.Sc. cum laude (Zoology
and Botany). Rebecca has been an independent
consultant with her company, Riverfutures, for several
years, and an Adjunct Principal Research Fellow of
the Australian Rivers Institute, Griffith University. She
serves on the International Union for Conservation of
Nature Species Survival Commission’s Freshwater
Conservation Committee. She has also served as
an invited jury member for Swiss Re Foundation’s
international ReSource Award and on the Ramsar
Convention on Wetlands’ Scientific and Technical
Review Panel. Rebecca has co-authored numerous
publications, including a 2017 book on Water for the
Environment, and is a Freshwater Science Associate
Editor for Frontiers in Environmental Science.
Prof. Karl Matthias Wantzen
Host scientist
After studying on the Rhine (German Federal Institute
of Aquatic Sciences), Karl M. Wantzen worked as
fellow at the Max Planck- Society to undertake his
PhD on stream ecology, and to coordinate a BMBFfunded
project on the Ecology of the largest wetland
of the World. 2007 habilitation on biodiversity,
functioning and structural dynamics of river- flood
plaincorridors. > 100 publications. Since 2010 he has
been professor (1st class) at the University of Tours,
where he lectures river ecology and management,
sustainable development and tropical ecology across
different faculties, and researches in the DATE team
(Landscape and urban ecology, and management)
of CITERES. In 2014 he was awarded the UNESCO
Chair on River Culture (Fleuve et Patrimoine,
renewed in 2018), and in 2015, “Talent de la Région
Centre” acknowledging his scientific and conceptual
achievements. Prof. Karl Matthias Wantzen shares
the coordination of the project with Prof. Stéphane
Rodrigues, sediment geologist at CITERES.
The project aims to highlight and explore the complex and diverse
interlinkages existing between the biological diversity and the cultural
diversity of large river systems, with a particular focus on the potential
implications for environmental water management. It aims to help
synthesise the diversity of case study evidence globally that demonstrates
how biodiversity and cultural diversity are intimately coupled in riverscapes,
both directly and indirectly, including through the flow regime as a driving
and dynamic connector.
Currently, freshwater biodiversity is in precipitous decline worldwide,
with flow alteration a major driver. A similarly critical situation exists for
cultural diversity. A central premise being investigated is that together with
declining biodiversity, cultural diversity (as that part of culture that is derived
from human-river relationships, or river culture) will also be impaired as a
result of the various disruptive flow regulation and fragmentation impacts
of large water infrastructure and water uses.
The project aspires to show that transdisciplinary, joined-up conservation
and management of rivers, including through the implementation of
environmental flows, has greater potential to synergistically address the
detrimental impacts of flow alteration on biological and cultural diversity
than their independent treatment. More broadly, it is hoped that the project
will provide a source of information for the elaboration of new approaches
to aid future implementation of environmental flow and freshwater
conservation policies, and thus more generally support the achievement of
the water and environment related Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
As the first stage of the project, a review is underway of the knowledge
base on river cultural and biological heritage, diversity and flow regimes,
based on scientific literature, case studies (including chapters of a new
river culture book in preparation), and projects. It is evident that there
are a number of frameworks, concepts, and theories that are pertinent
to address, and these are being consolidated, as are the wide range of
biocultural indicators with high potential for application in relation to basin
flow management.
Contacts have been made with various experts, institutions, and
programmes actively engaged in different aspects of river biodiversity
conservation and culture, including the IUCN nature-culture journey and
Ramsar Culture Network (of which Rebecca Tharme and K. M. Wantzen
have become members).
Rebecca has joined the doctoral advisory committee for a student
researching river culture in the Congo Basin, and will be part of a small
group (Mission Val de Loire, Biosphere Reserve Bassin de la Dordogne, and
CITERES) guiding an internship on the management application of different
conservation tools for inland water socio-ecosystems.
At the policy level, Rebecca has contributed to strategies, targets and
indicators for potential inclusion in the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity
Framework, which is currently in draft form.
Rebecca is collaborating with the United Nations Food and Agriculture
Organization, International Water Management Institute, IHE Delft Institute
for Water Education and partners to advance guidance for SDG “water
stress” indicator 6.4.2, with a co-designed environmental flow workshop
planned for April 2020, Rome, Italy.