UN: Human activity caused "irreversible damage" to global water supply

Decades of human activity have pushed the planet into an era of “global water bankruptcy”, causing irreversible damage to freshwater systems and increasing the risk of conflict, displacement and food insecurity, according to a new report from the United Nations University (UNU).

The report says deforestation, pollution, soil degradation, water overallocation and chronic groundwater depletion, compounded by global heating, have undermined the planet’s water systems and their ability to recover. It argues that widely used terms such as “water stress” and “water crisis” no longer reflect the severity of today’s reality, which is already driving “fragility, displacement, and conflict” in many parts of the world, Euronews writes. 

What does "water bankruptcy" mean?

The UNU defines water bankruptcy as a “persistent over-withdrawal from surface and groundwater relative to renewable inflows and safe levels of depletion”, alongside “irreversible or prohibitively costly loss of water-related natural capital”. This differs from water stress, which describes high-pressure situations that may still be reversible, and from a water crisis, which usually refers to acute shocks that can be overcome.

While not every river basin or country is considered water-bankrupt, the report’s lead author, Kaveh Madani, Director of the UN’s think tank on water, says enough critical systems have crossed these thresholds to change the global risk landscape.

“These systems are interconnected through trade, migration, climate feedbacks, and geopolitical dependencies, so the global risk landscape is now fundamentally altered,” he says.

The report stresses that water bankruptcy is not about how wet or dry a place appears, but about long-term balance, accounting and sustainability. Even regions that experience regular flooding can be water-bankrupt if they consistently use more water than their renewable supply. Because water, food and trade systems are tightly linked, the consequences of water bankruptcy extend well beyond local or national borders.

“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.”

Global water supply in numbers

Using global datasets and recent scientific evidence, the report presents what it describes as a stark picture of the state of the world’s water, attributing the “overwhelming majority” of damage to human activity. It finds that 50 per cent of large lakes worldwide have lost water since the early 1990s, affecting water sources on which 25 per cent of humanity depends, and that dozens of major rivers now fail to reach the sea for parts of the year. 

It also notes that 410 million hectares of natural wetlands, almost equal in size to the European Union, have disappeared over the past five decades, while global glacier loss has accelerated, increasing by 30 per cent since the 1970s.

The report adds that salinisation has damaged around 100 million hectares of cropland and that 70 per cent of major aquifers are showing long-term decline.

Call for reset

The authors argue that the current global water agenda, which largely focuses on drinking water, sanitation and efficiency improvements, is no longer fit for purpose. They call for a reset that formally recognises the reality of water bankruptcy, treats water as both a constraint and an opportunity for meeting climate commitments, and embeds water-bankruptcy monitoring within a global framework.

Governments are urged to crack down on pollution and wetland damage, support transitions for communities whose livelihoods must change, and transform water-intensive sectors, including agriculture.

Without such measures, the report warns, the burden will fall disproportionately on smallholder farmers, Indigenous People, low-income urban residents, women and young people.

“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.”

By Sabina Mammadli