Aspiration to action: Opportunities to align freshwater ecosystems with climate actions

Freshwater ecosystems play a vital role in regulating the water cycle, supporting biodiversity, and enhancing resilience to hydrological and ecological pressures, yet they remain largely overlooked in global climate policies. Most national climate commitments lack clear, spatially defined targets for protecting and restoring these critical systems. To address this gap, we developed a global map of high-value freshwater ecosystems based on 30-meter land cover data, hydrological networks, and global floodplain models, and identified country-level pathways for climate adaptation and mitigation through nature-based solutions. Here we show that these ecosystems cover over 51 million square kilometers globally, highlighting major opportunities to reduce flood risk, protect freshwater resources, and strengthen ecological resilience through targeted protection and restoration. Our analysis indicates that restoring degraded croplands and short vegetation within these areas could sequester between 1.07 and 3.41 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide each year, across 355 to 484 million hectares, depending on the restoration scenario. Nearly half of this mitigation potential lies within the 49 countries committed to the Freshwater Challenge. These results provide a practical foundation for integrating freshwater ecosystems into national climate strategies and further demonstrate how place-based interventions can align global climate goals with regional freshwater protection targets, advancing efforts to adapt to and mitigate climate change.