The true state of our water systems

Amid chronic groundwater depletion, water overallocation, land and soil degradation, deforestation and pollution, all compounded by global heating, a recently published UN report declares the dawn of an era of global water bankruptcy, inviting world leaders to facilitate “honest, science-based adaptation to a new reality". According to lead author Kaveh Madani, Director of the UN University’s Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH), the familiar terms “water stressed” and “water crisis” fail to reflect today’s reality in many places: a post-crisis condition marked by irreversible losses of natural water capital and an inability to bounce back to historic baselines.

Expressed in financial terms, the report says that many societies have not only overspent their annual renewable water “income” from rivers, soils and snowpack, they have depleted long-term “savings” in aquifers, glaciers, wetlands, and other natural reservoirs. This has resulted in a growing list of compacted aquifers, subsided land in deltas and coastal cities, vanished lakes and wetlands, and irreversibly lost biodiversity.

“Investment in water is also investment in mitigating climate change, biodiversity loss, and desertification.”

A systemic challenge

While not every basin and country is water-bankrupt, Madani says that “enough critical systems around the world have crossed these thresholds. These systems are interconnected through trade, migration, climate feedbacks and geopolitical dependencies, so the global risk landscape is now fundamentally altered.”

A simple illustration of water income and water expenses in a human–water system. Water bankruptcy is the outcome of both insolvency and irreversibility conditions, i.e., when water use (expenditure) exceeds water supply (renewable and non-renewable assets) for an extended period resulting in irreparable damages to the underlying natural capital that contributes to water production and stability of the hydrological cycle.
Source: UNO-INWEH

Hotspots

• In the Middle East and North Africa region, high water stress, climate vulnerability, low agricultural productivity, energy-intensive desalination, and sand and dust storms intersect with complex political economies.
• In parts of South Asia, groundwater-dependent agriculture and urbanisation have produced chronic declines in water tables and local subsidence.
• In the American Southwest, the Colorado River and its reservoirs have become symbols of over-promised water.

Vulnerability to water-related challenges

Baseline vulnerability of different nations to water-related challenges. This index reflects the susceptibility of a region to water-related challenges, considering its environmental, social, and economic conditions. Map produced based on data from Water Resources Vulnerability Monitor.
Source: UNU-INWEH

A shared global risk

“Millions of farmers are trying to grow more food from shrinking, polluted, or disappearing water sources. Without rapid transitions toward water-smart agriculture, water bankruptcy will spread rapidly,” Madani says, continuing: “Agriculture accounts for the vast majority of freshwater use, and food systems are tightly interconnected through trade and prices. When water scarcity undermines farming in one region, the effects ripple through global markets, political stability, and food security elsewhere. This makes water bankruptcy not a series of isolated local crises, but a shared global risk that demands a new type of response: bankruptcy management, not crisis management.”

“ In the fragmented world we live in, water can become a powerful focus for cooperation and for aligning national security with international priorities”

A world in the red

Drawing on global datasets and recent scientific evidence, the report presents a stark statistical overview of trends, the overwhelming majority caused by humans:

• Billions of people are living with chronic water insecurity. Around 2.2 billion people still lack safely managed drinking water, 3.5 billion lack safely managed sanitation, and nearly 4 billion face severe water scarcity for at least one month each year. Almost three-quarters of the world’s population live in countries classified as water insecure or critically water insecure.
   
• Surface waters and wetlands are shrinking on a massive scale. More than half of the world’s large lakes have lost water since the early 1990s, affecting about one-quarter of the global population that relies on them directly. Over the last five decades, humanity has lost roughly 410 million hectares of natural wetlands, almost the land area of the European Union. This includes about 177 million hectares of inland marshes and swamps, roughly the size of Libya or seven times the area of the United Kingdom. The loss of ecosystem services from these wetlands is valued at over 5.1 trillion US dollars, similar to the combined GDP of around 135 of the world’s poorest countries.
   
• Groundwater depletion and land subsidence show that hidden reserves are being exhausted. Around 70 per cent of the world’s major aquifers show long-term declines. Land subsidence linked to groundwater over-pumping now affects more than six million square kilometres, almost five per cent of the global land area, and nearly two billion people. This permanently reduces storage and increases flood risk in many cities, deltas and coastal zones.

Number of water-related conflicts 

Annual number of water-related conflicts worldwide. The chart highlights an increase in number of water-related conflict incidents over time. Chart produced based on data from the Water Conflict Chronology, The World's Water.
Source: UNU-INWEH

• Water quality degradation further reduces usable water and accelerates bankruptcy. Growing loads of untreated wastewater, agricultural runoff, industrial pollution and salinisation are degrading rivers, lakes and aquifers. Even where volumes appear sufficient on paper, the fraction of water that is safe for drinking, irrigation, and ecosystems continues to shrink.
   
• The cryosphere is melting, eroding a critical long-term water buffer. In multiple locations, the world has already lost more than 30 per cent of its glacier mass since 1970. Some mountain ranges risk losing functional glaciers within decades, undermining water security for hundreds of millions of people who depend on rivers fed by glacier and snowmelt.
   
• Farmers and food systems sit at the very heart of Global Water Bankruptcy. Roughly 70 per cent of global freshwater withdrawals is used for agriculture, much of it in the Global South. Groundwater provides about 50 per cent of domestic water use and over 40 per cent of irrigation water worldwide. Both drinking water and food production now depend heavily on aquifers that are being depleted faster than they can realistically recharge.
   
• Global food production is increasingly exposed to water decline and degradation. About three billion people and more than half of global food production are concentrated in areas where total water storage is already declining or unstable. More than 170 million hectares of irrigated cropland, about the combined land area of France, Spain, Germany and Italy, are under high or very high water stress. Salinisation has degraded roughly 82 million hectares of rainfed cropland and 24 million hectares of irrigated cropland, eroding yields in key global breadbaskets.

Share of agriculture from total water withdrawals 

Agricultural water withdrawals as a share of total water withdrawals. The map shows the proportion of water withdrawn by each country for agriculture relative to combined agricultural, industrial, and domestic water withdrawals. Map produced based on data from AQUASTAT, FAO.
Source: UNU-INWEH

• Drought impacts are becoming steadily more human-made and extremely costly. The report identifies a growing pattern of anthropogenic drought, meaning water deficits caused by overuse and degradation rather than natural variability alone. These impacts already cost around 307 billion US dollars per year, more than the annual GDP of almost three-quarters of United Nations Member States.

A call to reset the global water agenda

The report warns that the current global water agenda – largely focused on drinking water, sanitation and incremental efficiency improvements – is no longer fit for purpose in many places and calls for a new global water agenda that:

• formally recognises the state of water bankruptcy,
• recognises water as both a constraint and an opportunity for meeting climate, biodiversity, and land commitments,
• elevates water issues in climate, biodiversity, and desertification negotiations, development finance, and peacebuilding processes,
• embeds water-bankruptcy monitoring in global frameworks, using Earth observation, AI, and integrated modelling, and
• uses water as a catalyst to accelerate cooperation between the UN Member States.

“A practical and cooperative focus on water offers a way to connect urgent local needs with long-term global goals.”

In practical terms, managing water bankruptcy requires governments to focus on the following priorities:

• preventing further irreversible damage such as wetland loss, destructive groundwater depletion, and uncontrolled pollution;
• rebalancing rights, claims, and expectations to match degraded carrying capacity;
• supporting just transitions for communities whose livelihoods must change;
• transforming water-intensive sectors, including agriculture and industry, through crop shifts, irrigation reforms, and more efficient urban systems;
• building institutions for continuous adaptation, with monitoring systems linked to threshold-based management.

A matter of justice

The report underlines that water bankruptcy is not merely a hydrological problem, but a justice issue with deep social and political implications requiring attention at the highest levels of government and multilateral cooperation. The burdens fall disproportionately on smallholder farmers, Indigenous Peoples, low-income urban residents, women and youth while the benefits of overuse often accrue to more powerful actors.

A driver of fragility, displacement and conflict

“Water bankruptcy is becoming a driver of fragility, displacement, and conflict,” says UN Under-Secretary-General Tshilidzi Marwala, Rector of UNU. “Managing it fairly – ensuring that vulnerable communities are protected and that unavoidable losses are shared equitably – is now central to maintaining peace, stability, and social cohesion.”

“Bankruptcy management requires honesty, courage and political will,” Madani adds. “We cannot rebuild vanished glaciers or reinflate acutely compacted aquifers. But we can prevent further loss of our remaining natural capital and redesign institutions to live within new hydrological limits.”

“Targeted investment in water can address the immediate concerns of communities and nations while also advancing the objectives of the Rio Conventions (climate, biodiversity, desertification).”

Upcoming milestones as the 2026 and 2028 UN Water Conferences, the end of the Water Action Decade in 2028, and the 2030 SDG deadline, for example provided critical opportunities to implement this shift, Madani says.

(UNU-INWEH/sri)

More information:

Link to report