The Western Ghats is one of the world’s most heavily populated biodiversity hotspots providing for and supporting 400 million people. However, these diverse freshwater ecosystems face many threats because of untrammelled economic development.

Biodiversity within inland water ecosystems in southern Africa is both highly diverse and of great regional importance to livelihoods and economies. However, development activities are not always compatible with the conservation of this diversity and it is poorly represented within the development planning process.