Around the world, people are drawing down reserves of fresh water faster than they can be replenished. The heedless consumption of water, combined with worsening drought globally, has ushered in an era of “water bankruptcy,” according to a dire new U.N. report.
The report finds that countries are not just using up the annual supply from rain and melting snow, but also using up the stores of water held in underground aquifers, inland wetlands, and mountaintop glaciers. When depleted, these vital reservoirs may be forever lost as aquifers collapse, wetlands dry up, and glaciers melt away.
The report is based on a new study, published in Water Resources Management, that defines “water bankruptcy” as the loss of natural reservoirs resulting from the unsustainable use of fresh water. Unlike ongoing “water stress” and acute “water crises,” the report explains, “water bankruptcy” is irreversible.
The report is rife with bracing statistics about the growing global water deficit. It notes that more than 40 percent of water for irrigation comes from aquifers that are being steadily drained, and that more than 70 percent of aquifers worldwide are now in decline. Over the past half-century, the world has lost more than 1.5 million square miles of wetlands, an area larger than India, while glaciers globally have shrunk by more than 30 percent.
In total, some 3 billion people now live in regions where water storage is unstable or declining. And even in places where the supply of water appears sufficient on paper, industrial pollution, untreated wastewater, and farm runoff are rendering large volumes of water unusable, the report says.
Hot spots for water bankruptcy include the Middle East, South Asia, and the U.S. Southwest, all regions facing both intensifying drought and the profligate use of water for farming. “Millions of farmers are trying to grow more food from shrinking, polluted, or disappearing water sources,” said lead author Kaveh Madani, director of the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment, and Health. Without a shift toward more sustainable farming, he said, “water bankruptcy will spread rapidly.”
The report comes ahead of a major U.N. meeting on water, to be held next week in Dakar, Senegal. It warns that while countries have been focused on providing clean water, the world must tackle the growing water deficit, including by formally recognizing the state of water bankruptcy. Governments, the report says, must focus on halting the irreversible loss of natural reservoirs.
“We cannot rebuild vanished glaciers or reinflate acutely compacted aquifers. But we can prevent further loss of our remaining natural capital,” said Madani. “The longer we delay, the deeper the deficit grows.”
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