UN declares era of water bankruptcy in new report
The United Nations released a report declaring that the world has entered an era of “global water bankruptcy” that is harming billions of people. The report found that nearly three-quarters of the global population live in countries classified as “water insecure” or “critically water insecure”, and 4 billion people face severe water scarcity at least once a month. Lead author on the report, Kaveh Madani, said this water scarcity will have global implications. “Water bankruptcy is also global because its consequences travel,” he said. “Agriculture accounts for the vast majority of freshwater use, and food systems are tightly interconnected through trade and prices.” According to the research, 410 million hectares of natural wetlands, almost equal in size to the entire European Union, have been erased in the past five decades, and 50% of large lakes have lost water since the early 1990s. As well as this, the annual value of lost wetland ecosystems has reached US$5.1 billion, and the current annual global cost of drought has reached US$307 billion. More than 170 million hectares of irrigated crop land are also under “high” or “very high” water stress, and economic damage from land degradation, groundwater depleti
