A United Nations report has warned that “water bankruptcy” is here as rivers, lakes, glaciers and underground aquifers are being “damaged beyond realistic prospects of full recovery”, leaving billions of people struggling to cope with worsening water shortages.
The United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH) said decades of overconsumption, pollution, environmental degradation and climate pressures have pushed many water systems beyond recovery, to the point that a new term is required to describe the crisis.
“For decades, ‘water stress’ and ‘water crisis’ have been the dominant frames of discourse. They have helped mobilise attention and resources, but they now obscure a fundamental shift in the condition of many human–water systems,” the report stated. “These terms are no longer adequate to spark proper responses as they cannot explain what is happening today in human-water systems,” it added, introducing the concept of “water bankruptcy.”
The report defines water bankruptcy as a condition in which long-term water use exceeds natural resupply, while ecosystems are damaged so severely that restoring them to previous levels is no longer realistic. Evidence of this is already visible in the shrinking of major lakes, the growing number of rivers that fail to reach the sea for parts of the year, and the rapid depletion of groundwater reserves.
Billions remain water insecure, the report further noted, estimating that nearly three-quarters of the world’s population live in countries classified as “water insecure” or “critically water insecure.” It added, “Around 2.2 billion people still lack safely managed drinking water, 3.5 billion lack safely managed sanitation, and about 4 billion experience severe water scarcity for at least one month a year.”
Wetlands Liquidated On Continental Scale
Wetlands have suffered dramatic losses, with roughly 410 million hectares—nearly the size of the European Union—disappearing over the past five decades. “The loss of ecosystem services from these wetlands is valued at over US$5.1 trillion, roughly equivalent to the combined annual GDP of about 135 of the world’s poorest countries.”
Groundwater depletion further highlights the scale of the crisis, with around 70 per cent of major aquifers used for drinking water and irrigation showing long-term declines. Over-extraction has already caused widespread land subsidence across nearly 5% of the Earth’s land surface, including densely populated urban areas home to about 2 billion people. In some places, the ground is sinking by up to 25 cm per year, permanently reducing groundwater storage and increasing the risk of flooding.
Economic impacts are also mounting. According to the report, land degradation, groundwater depletion and climate change together cause more than $300 billion in economic losses annually. Around three billion people and more than half of global food production are concentrated in regions where water storage levels are already unstable or declining. Salinisation has further degraded more than 100 million hectares of cropland, reducing agricultural productivity.
Climate change is intensifying the problem, accelerating the loss of glaciers, which have shrunk by more than 30 per cent since 1970. Hundreds of millions of people depend on seasonal glacial meltwater, making this decline particularly alarming. The report noted that humanity has effectively drawn down its natural “water savings” stored in aquifers, glaciers, soils, wetlands and river ecosystems, leaving many systems in what it describes as a “post-crisis state of failure”.
‘Stop Treating Water Scarcity As Temporary Challenge’
Kaveh Madani, director of UNU-INWEH and lead author of the report, said many regions are already living beyond their hydrological means. “Many critical water systems are already bankrupt,” he said. “By acknowledging the reality of water bankruptcy, we can finally make the hard choices that will protect people, economies and ecosystems.”
Madani added that governments must stop treating water scarcity as a temporary challenge and instead confront the severity of the situation honestly. “Let’s adopt this framework. Let’s understand this. Let us recognise this bitter reality today before we cause more irreversible damage,” he said.
The report argues that existing approaches to water management are no longer fit for purpose. Rather than focusing on “returning to normal,” it calls for a new global water agenda aimed at minimising damage, strengthening resilience and prioritising long-term sustainability.
Tim Wainwright, chief executive of WaterAid, described the findings as “a hard truth: the world’s water crisis has crossed a point of no return.” However, some experts cautioned that the global picture is complex. Jonathan Paul, a geoscience professor at Royal Holloway, University of London, welcomed the report’s focus but said it underplayed the role of population growth. “The elephant in the room is the role of massive and uneven population growth in driving so many of the manifestations of water bankruptcy,” he said.
The report draws on existing data and research rather than attempting to catalogue every water-related problem worldwide. It is based on a peer-reviewed study due to be published in the journal Water Resources Management, which will formally propose and define the concept of “water bankruptcy” as a new framework for understanding the global water crisis.
