Half the world’s 100 largest cities are in high water stress areas
Graeme Taylor
On Tuesday the UN announced that the world had entered a state of water bankruptcy where deterioration of some water resources had become permanent and irreversible. Prof Kaveh Madani, director of the United Nations University Institute for Water Environment and Health, said poor management of water is frequently the main cause of bankruptcy and that climate breakdown is seldom the sole reason: “Climate change is like a recession on top of bad management of business.”
The World Bank Group has also been sounding the alarm. Global freshwater reserves have plunged sharply over the past 20 years, according to the group, which says the planet is losing about 324bn cubic metres of freshwater every year, enough to meet the annual needs of 280 million people, or roughly the population of Indonesia. The losses affect major river basins on every continent.