UN warns of ‘global water bankruptcy’

Water is our staple food. A person can survive for several weeks without food, but only a few days without water. The right to water is a human right.

But we have been living on credit for years. For decades, we have been extracting more water from the earth than is replenished. And climate change is dramatically exacerbating the problem.

The latest water report from the UN therefore calls for a new approach to water: ‘The world is entering a new era characterised by water scarcity,’ says the author of the report, Kaveh Madani, Director of the Institute for Water, Environment and Health at the UN University in Toronto, Canada, and lead author of the report. Simply talking about ‘water stress’ no longer does justice to the situation; the Earth is facing ‘water bankruptcy,’ which requires ‘bankruptcy management.’

The new UN water report cites examples of the new water emergency: groundwater levels are falling worldwide, especially in China, India, North Africa and the south-eastern United States, but also in southern Europe. Glaciers are melting faster and faster, and wetlands are being destroyed. By the 1990s, more than half of the large lakes had shrunk, most significantly the Aral Sea between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, the Great Salt Lake in the United States and Lake Urmia in Iran. Since the 1970s, a third of the glacier mass has been lost: in the Arctic, the Antarctic, Greenland, Alaska, the Alps and the Himalayas.

It is no longer enough to talk about a ‘crisis’, says Kaveh Madani. The report therefore refers to ‘water bankruptcy’. This means ‘an irreversible loss of water reserves’.

Water conservation will therefore be a key task in the future. Seventy per cent of the world’s fresh water is used in agriculture. Underground drip irrigation can save up to 85 per cent of water consumption.

Even if the global North does not feel affected by water bankruptcy, it is a global problem, Madani emphasises. That is why rich industrialised nations must help the poor South with new water technologies – such as seawater desalination. More than half of humanity is already affected by water bankruptcy, according to the dramatic UN report. Water conservation, water efficiency and water recycling are the order of the day.

• UNU-INWEH report on ‘Global Water Bankruptcy’
• ‘GLOBAL WATER BANKRUPTCY’ – Living Beyond Our Hydrological Means in the Post-Crisis Era (pdf)

Source

Franz Alt 2026 | Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator