Decades of human activity have left “irreversible damage” to the planet’s water supply, a new report warns.
Human activity has pushed the world into an era of “global water bankruptcy”, as experts call for an urgent, science-based transformation.
A new report from the United Nations University (UNU) warns that decades of deforestation, pollution, soil degradation, water overallocation, and chronic groundwater depletion – compounded by global heating – have caused “irreversible damage” to the planet’s water supply and its ability to bounce back.
It argues that terms such as ‘water stress’ and ‘water crisis' no longer accurately reflect today’s stark reality, which is driving “fragility, displacement, and conflict” worldwide.
What does ‘water bankruptcy’ mean?
The UNU report defines water bankruptcy as a “persistent over-withdrawal from surface and groundwater relative to renewable inflows and safe levels of depletion”. The term also requires "irreversible or prohibitively costly loss of water-related natural capital”.
This differs from water stress which reflects high-pressure situations that remain reversible or a water crisis, which is used to describe acute shocks that can be overcome.
While not every basin and country is water-bankrupt, lead author Kaveh Madani, Director of the UN’s think tank on water, says enough critical systems have now crossed these thresholds.
“These systems are interconnected through trade, migration, climate feedbacks, and geopolitical dependencies, so the global risk landscape is now fundamentally altered,” he adds.
What does water bankruptcy look like?
Water bankruptcy isn’t about how wet or dry a place looks – it’s about balance, accounting and sustainability. Even regions that experience flooding every year can still be water-bankrupt if they overspend their annual renewable water “income”.
The report argues that water bankruptcy, therefore, has to be viewed through a global lens, as its consequences travel.
“Agriculture accounts for the vast majority of freshwater use and food systems are tightly interconnected through trade and price,” Madani says.
“When water scarcity undermines farming in one region, the effects ripple through global markets, political stability, and food security elsewhere. This makes water bankruptcy not a series of isolated local crises, but a shared global risk.”
The world’s water in numbers
Using global datasets and recent scientific evidence, the report compiles a “stark” overview of water trends – blaming the "overwhelming majority” on human activity.
This includes 50 per cent of large lakes worldwide that have lost water since the early 1990s, with 25 per cent of humanity directly dependent on the water source, and dozens of major rivers that now fail to reach the sea for parts of the year.
410 million hectares of natural wetlands, an area almost equal to the size of the EU, have also been erased in the past five decades. Global glacier loss since the 1970s has increased by 30 per cent.
Salinisation has damaged around 100 million hectares of cropland and 70 per cent of major aquifers (which hold and transmit groundwater) are showing long-term decline.
‘Resetting’ the global water agenda
The report argues that the current global water agenda, which is largely focused on drinking water, sanitation and efficiency improvements, is no longer fit for purpose.
It calls for a new agenda that formally recognises the state of water bankruptcy, recognises water as “both a constraint and an opportunity” for meeting climate commitments, and embeds water-bankruptcy monitoring in a global framework.
Governments are therefore being urged to crack down on pollution and wetland damage, support transitions for communities whose livelihoods must change, and transform water-intensive sectors, including agriculture.
Otherwise, the burden will fall disproportionately on smallholder farmers, Indigenous People, low-income urban residents, women and the youth, the report adds.
“Water bankruptcy is becoming a driver of fragility, displacement, and conflict,” says UN under-secretary-general Tshilidzi Marwala.
“Managing it fairly – ensuring that vulnerable communities are protected and that unavoidable losses are shared equitably – is not central to maintaining peace, stability and social cohesion.”
