Water scarcity has profound environmental and social implications. These include the degradation of freshwater ecosystems and the loss of the goods and services these ecosystems provide, such as drinking water and biodiversity. Water scarcity is predicted to be one of the key factors limiting development in the 21st century. Yet development agencies, national planners, and policy-makers often lack basic information needed to address water resource management problems. For example indicators at the basin scale on water flow, water use, water quality, dams, or biodiversity are lacking for most of the watersheds in the world.

Clean freshwater is essential for sustaining both people and species. While it is globally recognized that freshwater management must balance development and environment needs, efforts to implement a more integrated approach have seen limited success. Most visibly lacking is the incorporation of ecosystem needs into water allocation measures and the valuation of other goods and services that freshwater ecosystems provide. In order to reverse the status quo and manage water for people and nature we will need:

• Good, transparent information at the basin level on socio-economic, hydrological and biological factors;
• Information on the condition and value of the goods and services provided by freshwater ecosystems and identification of the people that benefit from and depend on these;
• Consideration of ecosystems as legitimate users of water to which part of the water resources are allocated.

There is an increasing need for this information from policy makers, water resource managers, NGOs, and the private sector, who are struggling to allocate water to competitive uses, while maintaining functioning ecosystems. However, this information, when it exists, is dispersed among different agencies, not standardized, and usually unavailable to a broad range of stakeholders.

WRI's goal is to catalyze action to address the water scarcity problem and its environmental and social implications and stimulate policy action by:

• Develop basin-level databases on the condition of freshwater systems (accessible to everyone over the Internet through the Water Resources eAtlas, EarthTrends, etc.) and which can be used to influence policy and guide development plans;
• Engage stakeholders to consider freshwater ecosystems as legitimate users of water, especially among the irrigation community, and in global water scarcity assessments;
• Develop indicators of environmental and human water scarcity, freshwater biodiversity, and wetlands goods and services for use in priority-setting exercises by NGOs, donor agencies, private sector and governments;
• Highlight the importance of wetlands in sustaining local livelihoods, especially among the poor in dryland regions (focus on African basins).