A Presumptive Standard for Environmental Flow Protection

ABSTRACT The vast majority of the world's rivers are now being tapped for their water supplies, yet only a tiny fraction of these rivers are protected by any sort of environmental flow standard. While important advances have been made in reducing the cost and time required to determine the environmental flow needs of both individual rivers and types of rivers in specific geographies, it is highly unlikely that such approaches will be applied to all, or even most, rivers within the forseeable future. As a result, the vast majority of the planet's rivers remain vulnerable to exploitation without limits. Clearly, there is great need for adoption of a “presumptive standard” that can fill this gap. In this paper we present such a presumptive standard, based on the Sustainability Boundary Approach of Richter (2009) which involves restricting hydrologic alterations to within a percentage‐based range around natural or historic flow variability. We also discuss water management implications in applying our standard. Our presumptive standard is intended for application only where detailed scientific assessments of environmental flow needs cannot be undertaken in the near term. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.