The world has entered the era of “global water bankruptcy” as water systems relied on by six billion people, and half of the world’s food production, are pushed beyond the point of recovery, a United Nations (UN) report has found.

The report marks the first time UN scientists have declared water systems “bankrupt” rather than “stressed or “in crisis”, a distinction that denotes irreversible damage to natural water systems, as opposed to acute, time-limited shortages due to factors like weather, high demand or economic shocks.

“This report tells an uncomfortable truth: many regions are living beyond their hydrological means, and many critical water systems are already bankrupt,” said Kaveh Madani, director of the UN University’s Institute for Water, Environment and Health and lead author of the report.

“If we continue to manage these failures as temporary crises with short-term fixes, we will only deepen the ecological damage and fuel social conflicts,” Madani said. “We must act because water bankruptcy is a justice and security issue. The cost of the hydrological overshoot that the world is facing falls disproportionately on those who can least afford it.”

The UN report arrived ahead of high-level meetings in Dakar, Senegal, this week to prepare the agenda for the 2026 UN Water Conference, set for December in the UAE. It calls on member states to formally recognise water bankruptcy, establish global monitoring frameworks and position water investments as fundamental to achieving climate, biodiversity and food security targets.

This year’s summit is only the second major international meeting on water governance this century, following a 2023 summit at UN headquarters in New York. The only other global water conference in history was held in Mar del Plata, Argentina, in 1977.

“Declaring bankruptcy is not about giving up, it is about starting fresh. By acknowledging the reality of water bankruptcy, we can finally make the hard choices that will protect people, economies, and ecosystems,” Madani said. “The longer we delay, the deeper the deficit grows.”

‘Day Zero’ threatens major cities

The UN report draws on satellite data, hydrological modelling and over 300 case studies to document the scale of water loss.

More than half of the world’s large lakes have lost water since the early 1990s, over 30% of glacier mass since 1970 has disappeared in certain regions, while about 410 million hectares of natural wetlands—a land mass nearly equal to that of the European Union—have been destroyed over the past five decades.

“Surface waters are shrinking. Those are our checking accounts that get renewed every year, that nature is kind enough and generous enough to deposit some budget, give us some income,” Madani explained. “It is normal to go to the savings account and buy resilience for the dry years. But what we are seeing around the world is that the savings accounts are also draining – we are exhausting them.”

The Middle East, North Africa, South Asian and parts of the American Southwest face the most severe threat as high water stress collides with extreme vulnerability to climate change. Over 1.42 billion people, including 450 million children, already live in conditions of high or extremely high water vulnerability, according to UN Water data.

For some of the world’s largest cities, the crisis has already arrived. Metropolises around the globe, from Cape Town to Sao Paolo and Tehran, have already faced their first “Day Zero” emergencies – events where water supplies for a city are near complete depletion. Kabul, meanwhile, is on the brink of becoming the first major city globally to run out of water.

While cities survived, these first “Day Zero” events are warning shots, and many – particularly the urban poor – continue to live with the consequences, the UN warned.

“Emergency measures—severe restrictions, tariff changes, rapid drilling of new wells, reliance on tanker supplies, and behavioural campaigns—helped some cities narrowly avoid a complete shutdown of taps,” the report found.

“Yet in many of these places, the underlying aquifers, reservoirs and catchments remain degraded, and poorer neighbourhoods continue to live with intermittent service, tanker dependence, and high water costs long after the media attention has moved on.” 

Half the world’s 100 largest cities experience high water stress, while 38 – including Beijing, New York, Delhi, Los Angeles and Rio de Janeiro – face “extremely high stress” levels, according to a separate analysis published by Watershed Investigations this week.

Another study published this year by the University of Utrecht, analysing 21 global water scarcity hot spots, found that hydroclimatic change – long-term changes in water cycles driven by climate change – was cited in 49% of case studies, but typically was not the sole driver of scarcity, operating alongside population growth (31% of cases), agricultural overuse (77%), industrial demand (30%) and municipal consumption (46%).

Disease and displacement

Water access is a fundamental determinant of health, yet nearly 2.2 billion people lack safely managed drinking water, while 3.5 billion lack safely managed sanitation, according to WHO figures. 

These gaps expose populations to cholera, typhoid, polio, dysentery, hepatitis A and diarrhoea. Waterborne diseases and inadequate water supplies kill an estimated 3.5 million people annually, according to UN Water. WHO research estimates that 900 children under five per day die from diarrheal diseases caused by unsafe water.  That is one child every two minutes, adding up to 328,500 deaths every year.

About four billion people—nearly two-thirds of the global population—face severe water scarcity for at least one month every year, forcing communities to use water contaminated with agricultural runoff, industrial waste and untreated sewage for basic health activities such as handwashing and bathing. This amplifies the breeding grounds for infectious waterborne disease spread and raises risks of poisoning from chemicals like lead or arsenic.

Water scarcity also drives displacement, which cascades into health crises as populations move into areas with inadequate sanitation, limited healthcare and overcrowded conditions that accelerate health risks. Over 700 million people are projected to be displaced by water scarcity by 2030, according to UNICEF.

“Bankruptcy management requires honesty, courage, and political will,” Madani said. “We cannot rebuild vanished glaciers or reinflate acutely compacted aquifers. But we can prevent further loss of our remaining natural capital, and redesign institutions to live within new hydrological limits.”

Water-driven conflicts rise

Water-related violence has nearly doubled since 2022, rising from 235 incidents to 419 in 2024, according to Water Conflict Chronology, a database updated this week by the Pacific Institute that tracks water-driven violence throughout history.

The dataset contains 2,757 conflicts dating back to a dispute in ancient Sumeria over water and irrigation that led to nearly a century of war in 2500BC. The latest incident added documents of residents punching and beating firefighters in Manila, Philippines, blaming them for a lack of water.

Water has increasingly been a target in major wars, despite Article 54 of the Geneva Convention classifying attacks or destruction of water infrastructure or supplies necessary for civilian survival as a war crime.

Recent examples include Israel’s systematic destruction of Gaza’s water systems and desalination plants, Russia targeting hydropower dams in Ukraine, and tensions over the Indus River treaty between India and Pakistan, the report found.

Oxfam’s water security lead, Joanna Trevor, told the Guardian that her team has observed “an increase in localised conflicts over water due to climate change and water insecurity” as competition for dwindling reserves intensifies.

“In East Africa and the Sahel, water is becoming increasingly insecure, and people are moving into new areas to access water, which in itself can trigger competition and conflict with the host population,” Trevor said.

UNICEF estimates that by 2040, roughly one in four children—about 450 million—will live in areas of extremely high water stress.

“Water bankruptcy is becoming a driver of fragility, displacement and conflict,” said Tshilidzi Marwala, UN Under-Secretary-General. “Managing it fairly is now central to maintaining peace, stability and social cohesion.”

Food systems dry up

Three billion people and more than half of global food production are concentrated in areas where total water storage is already declining or unstable, according to the report.

With agriculture accounting for an estimated 72% of global freshwater withdrawals, the report’s concern is echoed by recent research by the World Resources Institute (WRI), which found 25% of the world’s crops are grown in areas where water supply is highly stressed or unreliable.

“One out of every 11 people in the world grapples with hunger,” WRI found. “A hidden and growing driver is lack of water.”

As water stress soars, the world will need to produce 56% more food calories in 2050 than it did in 2010 to feed a projected population boom to 10 billion people.

Yet current production is already under threat: one-third of rice, wheat and corn produced globally—which provide more than half of global food calories—is grown in water-stressed regions, while irrigation water demand is forecast to increase 16% over the next two decades due to warming temperatures, according to WRI.

“We need to decouple growth from water,” Madani said. “We need to move away from the asumption that economic prosperit requires ever-increasing water withdrawals – the problem that has got us in this situation.”

Just 10 countries produce 72% of the world’s irrigated crops, with two-thirds of that production facing high to extremely high water stress. India, the world’s largest rice exporter, is losing up to 30 centimeters of groundwater per year in some regions, with depletion rates projected to triple by 2080.

Over 170 million hectares of irrigated cropland—equivalent to the combined land area of France, Spain, Germany and Italy—are under high or very high water stress. An additional 106 million hectares have been degraded by salinisation, the UN report found.

“Millions of farmers are trying to grow more food from shrinking, polluted or disappearing water sources,” Madani said. “Without rapid transitions toward water-smart agriculture, water bankruptcy will spread rapidly.”

“Despite its warnings, the report is not a statement of hopelessness,” he concluded. “It is a call for honesty, realism, and transformation.”

Image Credits: Art Poskanzer, Institute for the Study of War , Pacific Institute.