We humans monopolize much of the earth’s productive potential, and need to find better ways to take our harvest while maintaining some natural services. What incentives should be offered to encourage conservation plus production, and how can it be funded?

Vitousek has warned repeated about the excessive impact of humans on the environment. In many places, production has become more intensive, and increasingly excludes natural services. We urgently need to find ways for production and conservation to co-exist.

What is the relationship between the variables of climate change and the availability of water for the complex of services of inland water systems?

Multiple data and researches in drainage areas in different continents indicate an important reduction in the water availability in the fluvial and lentics systems. An example is in Mexico where almost all the river basins except the humid tropical zone (5% of the territory) have undergone an important reduction in the draining, particularly serious in the arid and semi-arid zones (60% of the territory); in the temperate and warm subhumid zones (35% of the territory) this same phenomenon even occurs, like in the river basin of the Santiago river in the center-West of the country, with a reduction of the draining between the 30 to 60% that includes several stepped dams. Derivative of the answer to the investigation, strategies will be able to establish in order to optimize the management of the river basins within the complex of services derived of the inland water systems.

Guadalupe de la Lanza-Espino and Jose Luis García-Calderón