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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jan/20/era-of-global-water-bankruptcy-is-here-un-report-says>
"The world has entered an era of “global water bankruptcy” that is harming
billions of people, a UN report has declared.
The overuse and pollution of water must be tackled urgently, the report’s lead
author said, because no one knew when the whole system could collapse, with
implications for peace and social cohesion.
All life depends on water but the report found many societies had long been
using water faster than it could be replenished annually in rivers and soils,
as well as over-exploiting or destroying long-term stores of water in aquifers
and wetlands.
This had led to water bankruptcy, the report said, with many human water
systems past the point at which they could be restored to former levels. The
climate crisis was exacerbating the problem by melting glaciers, which store
water, and causing whiplashes between extremely dry and wet weather.
Prof Kaveh Madani, who led the report, said while not every basin and country
was water bankrupt, the world was interconnected by trade and migration, and
enough critical systems had crossed this threshold to fundamentally alter
global water risk.
The result was a world in which 75% of people lived in countries classified as
water-insecure or critically water-insecure and 2 billion people lived on
ground that is sinking as groundwater aquifers collapse.
Conflicts over water had risen sharply since 2010, the report said, while major
rivers, such as the Colorado, in the US, and the Murray-Darling system, in
Australia, were failing to reach the sea, and “day zero” emergencies – when
cities run out of water, such as in Chennai, India – were escalating. Half of
the world’s large lakes had shrunk since the early 1990s, the report noted.
Even damp nations, such as the UK, were at risk because of reliance on imports
of water-dependent food and other products.
“This report tells an uncomfortable truth: many critical water systems are
already bankrupt,” said Madani, of the UN University’s Institute for Water,
Environment and Health. “It’s extremely urgent [because] no one knows exactly
when the whole system would collapse.”
About 70% of fresh water taken by human withdrawals was used for agriculture,
but Madani said: “Millions of farmers are trying to grow more food from
shrinking, polluted or disappearing water sources. Water bankruptcy in India or
Pakistan, for example, also means an impact on rice exports to a lot of places
around the world.” More than half of global food was grown in areas where water
storage was declining or unstable, the report said.
Madani said action to deal with water bankruptcy offered a chance to bring
countries together in an increasingly fragmented world. “Water is a strategic,
untapped opportunity to the world to create unity within and between nations.
It is one of the very rare topics that left and right and north and south all
agree on its importance.”"
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
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mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
