As the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH) marks 30 years of advancing science, policy, and capacity development on water, environment, and health, this milestone offers an important moment to reflect on the state of global water systems and the challenges ahead.
In this context, UNU-INWEH is launching its new flagship report, Global Water Bankruptcy: Living Beyond Our Hydrological Means in the Post-Crisis Era. The report highlights how the sustained overdraft of water systems—through the overuse of both renewable flows and long-term natural storage beyond safe limits—has pushed many river basins and aquifers into a post-crisis condition in which historical baselines are no longer attainable without transformative change.
Amid chronic groundwater depletion, water overallocation, land and soil degradation, deforestation, and pollution, all compounded by global heating, the report declares the dawn of an era of global water bankruptcy, inviting world leaders to facilitate “honest, science-based adaptation to a new reality.”
“This report tells an uncomfortable truth: many regions are living beyond their hydrological means, and many critical water systems are already bankrupt,” says lead author and UNU-INWEH Director, Professor Kaveh Madani.
Watch the Daily Noon Press Briefing of the Office of the Spokesperson for the Secretary-General, where UNU-INWEH Director, Prof. Kaveh Madani, will officially launch and present the report streamed live on Home | UN Web TV.
Media Contacts:
Kyra Bowman, UNU Head of Communications, bowman@unu.edu
Shooka Bidarian, Media and Journalism Fellow, Sustainability and Climate, shooka.bidarian@unu.edu
Available for Interview:
Prof. Kaveh Madani - Director, UNU-INWEH - madani@unu.edu
