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Presents "Freshwater Biodiversity: A Preliminary Global Assessment," number eight of the World Conservation Monitoring Centre (WCMC) Biodiversity Series. Features information on the biodiversity of inland waters, prepared for the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) by the WCMC in Cambridge.

The FAO-led Monitoring Taskforce established in support to the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration involves experts from over 100 organisations and serves as focal point for providing technical guidance and assistance on restoration monitoring for the UN Decade. The publication is the result of a joint effort by FAO and the UN Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC) in collaboration with members of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration Task Force on Monitoring. The overall objective of this work is to contribute to the implementation of the UN Decade as well as to the UN Secretary-General’s reporting to the United Nations General Assembly at its eighty-first session (A/RES/73/284), the monitoring framework for the UN Decade intends to support monitoring and reporting of the progress and achievements of ecosystem restoration for the UN Decade (2021–2030).

Global Biodiversity is the most comprehensive compendium of conservation information ever published. It provides the first systematic report on the status, distribution, management, and utilisation of the planet's biological wealth.

This publication gives a broad ecological overview of current condition in the three main parts of the biosphere, the seas, the land and inland waters. It also provides an historical context, from the origin of life on the planet onward. This has been done to demonstrate the long history of life on earth and to emphasise the brevity of human existence. The first part of the book includes a discussion of the components of biodiversity and an account of the expansion of this diversity through geological time and the pattern of distribution on the planet. The second part covers features of human impacts on the environment and the uses currently made of biodiversity. The main lesson drawn is that while life itself has remarkable tenacity, the tenure on earth of individual species has always been a strictly limited one. The environment of any species has two main roles: to provide the essential materials for growth and reproduction of the species and to remove or transform its waste products. A failure of either of these two will have an adverse or catastrophic impact on the species concerned. Ecosystems and the biosphere continue to function because the relentless pressure of natural selection has meant that organisms have evolved that thrive on the waste products of other organisms. This is considered in the book to be the function of biological diversity. A large number of tables and maps are presented in this publication, including a table on biodiversity at country level. This book has a companion volume, 'Life Counts'.