Regions across the world are afflicted by severe water problems: Kabul may be on course to be the first modern city to run out of water. Mexico City is sinking at a rate of around 20 inches a year as the vast aquifer beneath its streets is over-pumped. In the US Southwest, states are locked in a continual battle over the how to share the shrinking water of the drought-stricken Colorado River.
The global situation is so severe that terms like “water crisis” or “water stressed” fail to capture its magnitude, according to the report published Tuesday by the United Nations University and based on a study in the journal Water Resources.
“If you keep calling this situation a crisis, you’re implying that it’s temporary. It’s a shock. We can mitigate it,” said Kaveh Madani, director of the UN University’s Institute for Water, Environment and Health, and the report’s author.
With bankruptcy, while it’s still vital to fix and mitigate where possible, “you also need to adapt to a new reality… to new conditions that are more restrictive than before,” he told CNN.
1 Comment
The world has entered “an era of [global water bankruptcy](https://www.cnn.com/2026/01/20/climate/water-bankruptcy-drought-united-nations?utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=missions&utm_source=reddit)” with irreversible consequences, according to a new United Nations report.
Regions across the world are afflicted by severe water problems: Kabul may be on course to be the first modern city to run out of water. Mexico City is sinking at a rate of around 20 inches a year as the vast aquifer beneath its streets is over-pumped. In the US Southwest, states are locked in a continual battle over the how to share the shrinking water of the drought-stricken Colorado River.
The global situation is so severe that terms like “water crisis” or “water stressed” fail to capture its magnitude, according to the report published Tuesday by the United Nations University and based on a study in the journal Water Resources.
“If you keep calling this situation a crisis, you’re implying that it’s temporary. It’s a shock. We can mitigate it,” said Kaveh Madani, director of the UN University’s Institute for Water, Environment and Health, and the report’s author.
With bankruptcy, while it’s still vital to fix and mitigate where possible, “you also need to adapt to a new reality… to new conditions that are more restrictive than before,” he told CNN.