GNV News January 26, 2026

On January 20, 2026, the United Nations University released the report “Global Water Bankruptcy: Living Beyond Our Hydrological Means in the Post-crisis Era.”

Until now, words such as water stress and water crisis have been used as terms to warn that humanity is overusing the Earth’s water resources, but these terms imply the possibility of recovery. However, in many societies today, “income” from water resources that circulate on relatively short time scales—such as rivers and snowmelt—is being used at a rate that exceeds the speed at which it can be replenished. Moreover, even that is not enough, and “savings” that have taken many years to form—such as glaciers, groundwater, and wetlands—are being depleted as well. As a result, geological layers collapse and can no longer store water, and nature’s regulating functions are lost, causing water resources to deteriorate in a permanent and irreversible way. For this reason, by analogy with financial terminology, the term “water bankruptcy” (*) is now being used.

In fact, about 3 billion people and more than half of the world’s food production are located in regions that are already facing, or are predicted in the future to face, a decline in total water storage. According to an analysis by the research organization Watershed Investigations and the Guardian newspaper, in half of the world’s top 100 major cities, water withdrawals by public utilities and industry are highly likely to exceed the available supply. In particular, 38 cities including Beijing, Delhi, Los Angeles, and Rio de Janeiro face an extremely high level of risk. Satellite data from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) show that in places such as Tehran and Chennai, rapid drying is underway and “Day Zero”—when water supply to residents is cut off—is becoming a realistic prospect. While there are cities like Tokyo that are becoming more humid, the population living in areas experiencing strong, long-term drying is about 11 times larger than the population of those cities.

Water bankruptcy will spread through agriculture—which accounts for most freshwater use—to affect global markets, political stability, and food security. Furthermore, water is fundamental to life and forms the basis of cohesion both between and within nations, as well as being the foundation of climate, biodiversity, and the fight against desertification. Therefore, it is argued that we must respond by treating this as “bankruptcy management”: deciding how to share the remaining water fairly and wisely across the globe.

*More precisely, based on a scholarly article published in the academic journal Water Resources Management, it refers to: (1) the sustained overabstraction of surface and groundwater beyond renewable inflows or safe depletion levels; and (2) the resulting loss of water-related natural capital that is irreversible or prohibitively expensive to restore.

Learn more about conflicts over the world’s water resources → “Global Water Conflicts: Unreported Facts”

Learn more about water resource disputes in Africa → “The Nile: A River That Cannot Be Given Up”

Cracked dry land in Myanmar (Photo: Pyae Phyo Aung / Pexels [Pexels License])