A United Nations report warns that Earth has entered an era of water bankruptcy, driven by overconsumption and global warming. Three in four people live in countries facing water shortages, contamination or drought, as regions deplete groundwater reserves that take thousands of years to replenish. Urgent better management is needed to address the economic, social and environmental fallout.
The UN report highlights how most regions are overdrawing annual supplies of rainwater and snowmelt, turning to groundwater as a depleting savings account. Seventy per cent of major aquifers are declining, with many changes irreversible. Key drivers include agriculture and urban expansion into arid zones, exacerbated by climate change making those areas even drier.
Examples abound globally. In Turkey, nearly 700 sinkholes have emerged from excessive groundwater pumping. Desertification has triggered dust storms that killed hundreds in Beijing. Kaveh Madani, the report's author at the UN University Institute for Water, Environment and Health, describes the situation starkly: “Our checking account, the surface water… is now empty. The savings account that we inherited from our ancestors, the groundwater, glaciers and so on … they’re also drained now. We are seeing symptoms around the world … of water bankruptcy.”
Water scarcity affects about 4 billion people for at least one month annually, spurring migration, conflicts and unrest. In Iran, shortages contributed to recent protests amid the country's driest autumn in 50 years; dams and wells have nearly dried up Lake Urmia, once the Middle East's largest lake. The government is considering evacuating Tehran and using cloud seeding for rain.
In the United States, the Colorado River's flow has dropped 20 per cent over two decades, largely from reduced precipitation, higher evaporation and diversions for beef and dairy farming, as well as urban needs like Los Angeles' drinking water. Its reservoirs sit at about 30 per cent capacity and may hit 'dead pool' levels—10 to 15 per cent—by 2027, says Bradley Udall at Colorado State University. Negotiations on state consumption cuts failed last year. Udall notes that agriculture, using 70 per cent of water, must lead reductions: “The solution is going to have to come from agriculture primarily... Ag cutbacks, that’s what we’re talking about, and that’s true worldwide.”
Half of global food production occurs in areas with shrinking water storage, threatening livelihoods for over 1 billion people, mostly in lower-income countries exporting to richer nations. Madani emphasizes: “Water plays a major role in economies… because it puts people [in] jobs. If they lose their jobs, what happens is what you see in Iran today.”
Pollution compounds the crisis even in wetter regions. Data centres consume more water, while industry, sewage and fertilizers contaminate supplies. Wetlands the size of the European Union have vanished, mainly for farming, costing $5.1 trillion in services like flood protection and carbon storage. In Bangladesh, half the country’s wells carry arsenic from sea-level rise and saltwater intrusion; Dhaka's rivers are poisoned by fast-fashion chemicals. Sonia Hoque at the University of Oxford observes: “Every person knows that the rivers are being polluted because of the garment industry. But they know that stringent regulation, if applied, would… scare away the buyers.”
Glaciers have melted, cutting supplies for hundreds of millions. Madani urges learning to live with less through measurement: “You’re thinking about launching a [cloud-seeding] rocket to get water, but you don’t even know how much water you have in your system. We cannot manage what we do not measure.” Better accounting, including household meters and canal monitoring, is essential first.
