BY COMFORT OGBONNA
The world is sliding into an era of irreversible water “bankruptcy,” with billions of people already struggling to cope with the fallout of decades of overuse and the steady decline of vital freshwater sources, United Nations researchers warned on Tuesday. Lakes, rivers, glaciers and wetlands that once acted as reliable reserves are being drained faster than they can recover, leaving many regions dangerously exposed to water shortages.
According to a new report by the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health, nearly three-quarters of the global population now live in countries classified as either “water insecure” or “critically water insecure.” An estimated 4 billion people experience severe water scarcity for at least one month every year, a figure that underscores how widespread and persistent the crisis has become.
“Many regions are living beyond their hydrological means, and many critical water systems are already bankrupt,” said Kaveh Madani, the report’s lead author and director of the institute. He stressed that water systems around the world are being treated like an overdrawn bank account, where withdrawals continue despite the absence of sufficient deposits. “By acknowledging the reality of water bankruptcy, we can finally make the hard choices that will protect people, economies and ecosystems,” he added.
The report paints a stark picture of global water supplies that are already in what researchers describe as a “post-crisis state of failure.” Decades of unsustainable extraction have depleted natural water “savings” stored in underground aquifers, glaciers, soils, wetlands and river ecosystems. At the same time, pollution has further degraded what remains, reducing both the quantity and quality of available freshwater.
Agriculture, which consumes the majority of the world’s freshwater, is among the sectors most at risk. More than 170 million hectares of irrigated cropland—an area larger than Iran—are now under “high” or “very high” water stress. The combined economic damage from land degradation, groundwater depletion and climate change is estimated at more than $300 billion annually, highlighting the growing financial toll of water mismanagement.
The report also warns that three billion people, along with more than half of global food production, are concentrated in regions where water storage levels are unstable or declining. Salinisation, often caused by poor irrigation practices and rising sea levels, has already degraded more than 100 million hectares of cropland, further threatening food security and rural livelihoods.
Researchers argue that traditional approaches to water management are no longer adequate for the scale of the problem. Rather than aiming to “return to normal,” they call for a new global water agenda focused on limiting damage, improving resilience and rethinking how water is valued and governed in an era of scarcity.
Not all experts, however, believe the report fully captures the roots of the crisis. Jonathan Paul, a geoscience professor at Royal Holloway, University of London, said a major driver was underplayed. “The elephant in the room, which is mentioned explicitly only once, is the role of massive and uneven population growth in driving so many of the manifestations of water bankruptcy,” he said, arguing that rising demand from growing populations must be addressed alongside supply and management challenges.
Even so, the report’s central message is clear: without urgent and coordinated action, water shortages will intensify, with far-reaching consequences for human health, economic stability and the natural systems on which life depends.
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