UN Declares Global Water Use Has Surpassed Sustainable Limits

(MENAFN) The world has moved beyond a temporary water crisis into an era of “water bankruptcy,” with annual human water consumption now exceeding the renewable supply provided by rainfall and snowmelt each year, according to UN reports.

Half of the planet’s major lakes have been shrinking since the 1990s, even though these bodies of water directly sustain roughly a quarter of the global population. Over the past five decades, nearly 410 million hectares of natural wetlands—an area nearly the size of the European Union—have disappeared.

Groundwater accounts for about half of domestic water use worldwide, while over 40% of irrigation relies on aquifers that are being steadily depleted. Long-term declines are now evident in 70% of major aquifers.

Approximately 4 billion people experience severe water scarcity for at least one month per year, and nearly 75% of the world lives in nations facing either “water-insecure” or “critically water-insecure” conditions. Roughly 2.2 billion people lack access to safely managed drinking water, and 3.5 billion do not have safely managed sanitation services.

Between 2022 and 2023, around 1.8 billion people were affected by drought, with the economic cost of lost wetland ecosystem services estimated at $5.1 trillion annually and the cost of drought itself reaching $307 billion per year.

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