"Global Water Bankruptcy" Has Arrived; 2 Billion Live On Sinking Ground; 75% Live In Countries "Water-Insecure" Or Worse
The world has entered an era of “global water bankruptcy” that is harming billions of people, a UN report has declared. The overuse and pollution of water must be tackled urgently, the report’s lead author said, because no one knew when the whole system could collapse, with implications for peace and social cohesion. All life depends on water but the report found many societies had long been using water faster than it could be replenished annually in rivers and soils, as well as over-exploiting or destroying long-term stores of water in aquifers and wetlands.
This had led to water bankruptcy, the report said, with many human water systems past the point at which they could be restored to former levels. The climate crisis was exacerbating the problem by melting glaciers, which store water, and causing whiplashes between extremely dry and wet weather. Prof Kaveh Madani, who led the report, said while not every basin and country was water bankrupt, the world was interconnected by trade and migration, and enough critical systems had crossed this threshold to fundamentally alter global water risk.
The result was a world in which 75% of people lived in countries classified as water-insecure or critically water-insecure and 2 billion people lived on ground that is sinking as groundwater aquifers collapse. Conflicts over water had risen sharply since 2010, the report said, while major rivers, such as the Colorado, in the US, and the Murray-Darling system, in Australia, were failing to reach the sea, and “day zero” emergencies – when cities run out of water, such as in Chennai, India – were escalating. Half of the world’s large lakes had shrunk since the early 1990s, the report noted. Even damp nations, such as the UK, were at risk because of reliance on imports of water-dependent food and other products.
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The over-exploitation of groundwater was causing cities to subside around the world, with Rafsanjan, in Iran, sinking by 30cm a year; Tulare, in the US, by about 28cm a year, and Mexico City by about 21cm a year. Jakarta, Manila, Lagos and Kabul were other major cities affected. Among the most visible signs of this water bankruptcy, the report said, were the 700 sinkholes peppering the heavily farmed Konya plain in Turkey. Cities, such as Tehran, Cape Town, São Paulo and Chennai, had all faced day zero water crises, the report noted, while the number of water-related conflicts around the world had risen from 20 in 2010 to more than 400 in 2024.
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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jan/20/era-of-global-water-bankruptcy-is-here-un-report-says
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