Overview
- UNU-INWEH’s new report says many critical water systems have already passed recovery, reframing the situation from crisis response to post-crisis management.
- Quantitative markers show broad depletion: over 50% of major lakes have lost water since the early 1990s, around 70% of large aquifers are in long-term decline, more than 30% of glacier mass has vanished since the 1970s, and about 410 million hectares of wetlands are gone with $5.1 trillion in annual ecosystem services lost.
- Human exposure is extensive, with roughly 4 billion people facing severe shortages at least one month per year, about 1.8 billion experiencing drought in 2022–2023, some 75% living in countries with water insecurity, and around 2 billion residing where land is subsiding from aquifer collapse.
- Hotspots cited include the Middle East and North Africa, parts of South Asia, and the U.S. Southwest—where the Colorado River symbolizes over-allocation—alongside stressed systems such as Australia’s Murray–Darling and past urban near-failures in Chennai, Cape Town and São Paulo.
- The report calls for formal recognition of water bankruptcy, a review of extraction rights, transformation of high-consumption sectors including agriculture and industry, and more efficient and equitable urban management, warning that water scarcity is driving fragility, displacement and conflict.