Print PageMexico has identified the strategic need for further development of its water and hydropower resources to support future socioeconomic growth. Yet a recent diagnosis revealed that across 393 basins, more than half the nation’s riverine ecosystems already show signs of a high degree of ecohydrological alteration from natural. These deteriorating rivers, cumulatively representing 49% of the area of this mega-biodiverse country, are presently expected to sustain the ecosystem services and wellbeing of almost 83 million people. From a conservation perspective, only 14% of the country, comprising primarily first and second order river basins, remains relatively intact. The most influential drivers of this continued decline in ecosystem integrity, resilience and thus, loss of benefits for people, include hydrological regime alteration and river network fragmentation due to hydraulic infrastructure. In response to this ongoing crisis, a diverse group of government and non-government actors are trialling an innovative combination of approaches to tackle the central question of how to effectively safeguard aquatic biodiversity in the face of such intensive development pressure, and at appropriate scales. Opportunities created through Mexico’s evolving water, energy and environmental policies and regulatory frameworks underpin this collaborative move.
Results/Conclusions
We highlight several complementary initiatives underway that demonstrate how attention is being partly redirected from individual projects towards whole basin and regional scales, in relation to all phases of the water resources planning and management cycle from dam siting through to re-operation. We present an initial portfolio of emerging conservation priorities for Mexico’s inland waters and illustrate its utility in facilitating the integration of conservation and development visions in the context of ‘hydropower by design’. We go on to describe early results of a pilot application of the regional environmental flow framework, the Ecological Limits of Hydrologic Alteration (ELOHA), tailored to this broader aim of meeting a range of flow management objectives for river basins targeted for hydropower development. In a related exercise, we show the results of comparative analysis of the degree of hydrological connectivity of river basins assigned different conservation priorities under various development scenarios. Collectively, these approaches serve to illustrate the underutilised potential that exists to more effectively integrate hydropower development and river conservation imperatives, thereby safeguarding river system integrity and connectivity for the benefit of people and nature.
