来源：《新科学家》
原文见刊日期：2023年2月18日
Rivers are the lifeblood of human civilisation. Our metropolises are built on them and have been since the very first cities were built along the courses of the Tigris and the Euphrates in what was then Mesopotamia. They remain necessary: life depends just as much on water now as it did then.
河流是人类文明的命脉。自从第一批城市沿着底格里斯河和幼发拉底河的河道在当时的美索不达米亚建造以来，我们的大都市就建立在河流之上。河流仍然是必要的：现在的生活和那时一样依赖水。
But in the crowded, urbanised world we live in, they are also increasingly valued for their beauty and restorative power, attracting walkers and wild swimmers. It is understood that there are few things more uplifting to the human heart than a beautiful river, and that such uplift has a considerable impact on our mental and physical health. The UK is one of a handful of countries in the world to quantify the beneficial impact of being around freshwater: it saves the nation’s health services £870 million a year.
但在我们生活的拥挤、城市化的世界里，河流的美丽和疗养力也越来越受到重视，吸引了散步者和野泳者。众所周知，很少有东西能比一条美丽的河流更能振奋人心，这种振奋对我们的身心健康有相当大的影响。英国是世界上为数不多的几个量化淡水河带来的有益影响的国家之一：它每年为英国的医疗服务节省8.7亿英镑。
So we need our rivers and we love them too – yet we neglect them. We obstruct them, making it impossible for wildlife to travel upstream. We turn them into concrete canals, where little can grow. We allow rubbish to mount up on river beaches, poisoning and sometimes literally strangling the creatures that live in the water. We dump raw sewage into rivers, over and over again. Pesticides and farm waste leach in off the land. Less visibly, old mines seep poison into them.
所以我们需要河流，我们也爱河流——然而我们却忽视了河流。我们阻塞了河流，使野生动物无法逆流而上。我们把河流变成混凝土运河，在那里寸草不生。我们任由垃圾堆积在河滩上，毒害甚至扼杀了生活在水中的生物。我们一次又一次地把未经处理的污水倒进河里。农药和农业废弃物从土地中渗入。不太明显的是，旧矿井依然会渗入有毒物质。
In 2016, the International Union for Conservation of Nature published a report on the state of the UK and the Republic of Ireland’s rivers. It concluded that “truly natural environments that have escaped both direct and indirect human alteration no longer exist”. Things haven’t improved since. No rivers in England, Wales or Northern Ireland are considered to be in high ecological health, and only 14 per cent of England’s rivers qualify as good. When you take chemical pollution into account, no rivers in these three nations are deemed as being good. Not one.
2016年，国际自然保护联盟发布了一份关于英国和爱尔兰共和国河流状况的报告。报告的结论是，“避免了人类直接和间接改变的真正自然环境已不复存在”。从那以后，情况并没有好转。在英格兰、威尔士或北爱尔兰，没有一条河流被认为生态健康状况为优，英格兰只有14%的河流符合良好标准。如果把化学污染考虑在内，这三个地区的河流都不健康。是的，没有一条好河。
Rivers and other wetlands make up a very small fraction of Earth’s surface, but, according to the United Nations, they are home to 40 per cent of all plant and animal species. In the UK, a tenth of biodiversity depends on them. Their significance to our biosphere is tremendous. So how we treat our watercourses has vast implications for our future.
河流和其他湿地只占地球表面很小的一部分，但根据联合国的数据，它们是40%的动植物物种的家园。在英国，十分之一的生物多样性依赖于河流和湿地。它们对我们的生物圈的意义是巨大的。因此，我们如何对待我们的水道对我们的未来有着巨大的影响。