Management of Invasive Aquatic Plants

Increasing trade, travel, and transport of goods across borders, has facilitated the spread of plants into ecosystems where they do not occur naturally. These plants are causing enormous – often irreversible – damage to biodiversity and the valuable ecosystems upon which we depend.

Nuisance aquatic plants – or aquatic weeds – come in both macroscopic and microscopic forms. Macroscopic forms commonly include water hyacinths and macro-algae. Microscopic forms include algae and cyanobacteria, commonly called algal blooms when their concentrations are great enough to be visible and discolor the water.

Invasive aquatic plants can seriously interfere with drinking water quality, accessibility, navigability, irrigation and hydropower production, water withdrawals, and ecological functioning.  One of the well-known examples hereof is the water hyacinth invasion in Lake Victoria, which has been addressed by numerous project interventions, for example the World Bank Lake Victoria Environmental Management Project. 

Since the late 1990s, the World Bank has supported a number of aquatic weed management programs and has also been active in helping set up a secretariat for the Global Invasive Species Programme (GISP) as well as the Global Environment Facility (GEF).