World Water Day

  The Arab region is one of the most water-scarce regions globally, with 19 out of 22 Arab states meeting official definitions of water scarcity and 13 states meeting definitions of absolute water scarcity. Additional crises can exacerbate the water challenge in the region, including climate change, conflict, and socioeconomic and political upheaval. In 2017, the Regional Initiative for the Assessment of Climate Change Impacts on Water Resources and SocioEconomic Vulnerability in the Arab Region projected the duration and frequency of droughts in the region would increase. Women and girls frequently disproportionately shoulder the burden of these impacts because they may be vulnerable community members burdened by traditional gender roles. It has been estimated that 15% of schools in the Arab region have limited or no access to water, while 18% have limited or no access to basic sanitation services. In times of water scarcity or when WASH infrastructure is unavailable or insufficie...

Water shortages around the world can no longer be described as seasonal or exceptional. Around 4 billion people already live with severe water scarcity for at least one month every year . In many regions, water scarcity is increasingly driven by persistent long-term over-extraction and quality degradation rather than only by climatic variability. In many systems, water scarcity is therefore defined not only by how much water is available , but by how much of that water meets basicquality standards for human use, food production, and ecosystem health; polluted water or saline water may still appear in volumetric accounts, yet functionally it behaves as if it were not there.  Over 1.8 billion people—nearly one in four humans—were living under drought conditions in 2022–2023 , with the vast majority of them in low- and middle-income countries. Drought-related damages, intensified by land degradation, groundwater depletion, and climate change rather than by rainfall deficits alone,...

 Over the last four decades, the dominant global narrative has been that the world faces an escalating “ global water crisis ”. Reports and campaigns have warned of looming shortages, increasing droughts, growing competition between users in different parts of the world, and even the possibility of wars over water. The crisis framing has been effective in mobilizing attention and resources . It helped elevate water onto global agendas, justify investments, and spur the creation of SDG 6. Yet “crisis” carries a specific connotation. In risk and disaster management, a crisis is understood as an exceptional, time-bounded departure from normal conditions, triggered by a shock such as drought, flood, contamination, or infrastructure failure. The task of crisis management is to survive the shock and restore the system to something close to its previous state through mitigation efforts⁴. Implicit in this logic is the belief that the baseline itself remains viable⁵: if only we can get thr...

Communications should be a two-way exchange. ‘Questions people ask’ is a new feature where we answer some of the questions we get asked about important issues, such as, climate change , water scarcity , toilet equity and wastewater . Through responding to queries from our audiences, we aim to explain key issues in a clear and engaging way that fosters ongoing conversations. Questions people ask

Foreword to the UN-Water Annual Report 2023  by Mr. Alvaro Lario, President of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and Chair of UN-Water: "In a tumultuous year, the pivotal moment for the UN-Water family was the UN 2023 Water Conference in March – the first of its kind in a generation. Shortly after, and in response to the high expectations set by Member States, UN-Water released the milestone Blueprint for Acceleration: SDG 6 Synthesis Report on Water and Sanitation 2023 in July. This report contains key policy recommendations on how to move forward and work better together to protect humanity’s most precious commodity. The ‘blueprint’ identifies two crucial needs: for Member States to develop a UN political process for water and for the UN syste m to better unify its water-related efforts to support Member States. On the first, in September 2023, Member States at the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution that, among other things, established two UN...

  Water shortages consistently rank among the global risks of greatest concern to policy-makers and business leaders. In a survey of 525 investors with US$96 trillion in assets, 45% reported exposure to substantive risks from water insecurity – risks that threaten their reputation and license to operate, the security of their water supply chains , their financial stability, and their ability to grow. Among the companies reporting exposure, the combined business value at risk topped out at US$425 billion with about 40% of the risks anticipated to hit within the next 1–3 years. The World Bank estimated that regions affected by water scarcity could see their growth rates decline by as much as 6% of GDP by 2050 as a result of losses in agriculture, health, income and property – sending them into sustained negative growth

Water stress , essentially measured as water use as a function of available supply, affects many parts of the world. Over two billion people live in countries experiencing water stress. Physical water stress is often a seasonal rather than an annual phenomenon, as exemplified by the seasonal variability in water availability . An estimated four billion people live in areas that suffer from severe physical water scarcity for at least one month per year. About 1.6 billion people face ‘economic’ water scarcity , which means that while water may be physically available, they lack the necessary infrastructure to access that water ( Comprehensive Assessment of Water Management in Agriculture ).  Several of the world’s main aquifers are under increasing stress and 30% of the largestgroundwater systems are being depleted .  Water withdrawals for irrigation are The primary driver of groundwater depletion worldwide.

 Africa’s freshwater resources are estimated to be nearly 9% of the world’s total. However, these water resources are unevenly distributed, with the six most water-rich countries in Central and Western Africa holding 54% of the continent’s total water resources and the 27 most water-poor countries holding only 7%. About 73% of the total population of Sub-Saharan Africa did not use safely managed drinking water services in 2017. An estimated 14% of Africa’s population (about 160 million people) currently live under conditions of water scarcity, due in part to the uneven distribution of water resources as well as inequalities in the access to clean and portable water services .