Time for decisive actions to protect freshwater ecosystems from global changes

Freshwater ecosystems and their biodiversity provide fundamental services to humans such as nutritional resources production, water provisioning, water purification, recreation, and more globally climate regulation. Anthropogenic impacts on freshwater ecosystems and their biodiversity are already strong and will most probably increase in the near future. Anthropogenic drivers are widely known and include in particular, climate change, habitat shrinking and/or modification due to land-use (e.g. water abstraction for human and agricultural consumption, urbanization), habitat fragmentation and homogenization in stream flow dynamics due to the damming of rivers, introduction of non-native species, dumping of nutrient or organic loadings increasing eutrophication processes, and biodiversity over-exploitation. Here, I review the current and future effects of these anthropogenic drivers on freshwater ecosystems and their biodiversity and provide some few examples of existing solutions, either technological, nature-based or policy-based, that could be applied globally to halt and/or minimize their negative consequences. However, success will require systemic changes across public policy and a sufficient political will to do so.