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UN declares that the world has entered an era of 'global water bankruptcy'
- radicalethics 9mo agoFour billion people face severe water scarcity for at least one month each year Does anyone know what this looks like for typical cases? The water just cuts off for a month in some places I guess?
- worldsavior 9mo agoProbably something like having water for a few hours a day.
- codyb 9mo agoAnd being told to restrict showers, not to water lawns, etc
- Juliate 9mo agoThis has happened about every year in the past 10 years during Summer in France at least (I guess Spain/Portugal/Italy, all mediterranean countries are alike in this regard, even most continental European countries).
- ben_w 9mo agoThat's the British idea of a water shortage; I suspect that many people would be thrilled if their water supply was good enough to consider a lawn in the first place.
- darkerside 9mo agoProbably seasonal?
- jesse_faden 9mo agoIn a large city in southern India, our house would get water supplied one day of the week during summers. Our small one bedroom flat had barrels of water drums stored inside the house. We even had one in the bedroom. I was 14 and I would go down to the street to fetch ground water and fill those barrels up. This was in 2014.
- vdupras 9mo agoI don't know about the rest of the world, but here in Quebec, Canada, we had a very dry summer in 2025 and some farmers had to bring literal truckloads of water to their farm for their animals to stay alive. I remember that they were saying to the press that the cost it incurred made them lose a lot of money, making these animals net negative for them, budget wise. This year was an exception, I'm guessing it's going to become the norm. So, much higher food prices.
- sdoering 9mo agoThe reality is usually less dramatic than "water completely gone" but more chronically exhausting. For a sub-Saharan family, "severe water scarcity" often means: Daily life shifts Wells and water points yield less or run dry. Wait times at functioning sources grow from minutes to hours. Walking distances to water double or triple. Water quality drops as everyone crowds the remaining sources. Who carries the burden Mostly women and girls. During dry season, water collection can expand from one hour daily to four to six hours. Girls miss school, women lose time for farming or income generation. Practical consequences Washing, cooking, hygiene get rationed. Livestock often gets priority because it's the livelihood. Latrine hygiene suffers, raising disease risk. Conflicts at water points increase. What "one month per year" obscures The statistic sounds manageable, but that month typically falls during dry season when harvests also fail and food gets scarce. The effects compound. Water rarely just "cuts off" - it's more of a grinding struggle over a shrinking resource, where the poorest have to walk furthest. Edit: Formatting
- funkyfiddler69 9mo agoimagine a camping trip or a long hike and you didn't bring even remotely enough water; your shoes are extremely uncomfortable and your clothes are all soaked and dirty and you are constantly itching; heat, stress, kids, sickness, waiting lines, the crowds, noise, air pollution ... but these people are not on a hike, and they didn't get their full set of nutrients, "ever" and they don't have the safety of "just a couple more hours". you are constantly on edge. you are tired. there's work to be done. distances to be walked. through the dust and dirt and smog. children to be fed and old people that depend on your care. and you do get horny, and you fuck and you have to wash before and after ... with ... well, not really clean water ... and did I mention the smell? now that doesn't apply to all the four billion, of course but you should get the picture. I know poverty, and some of the itchiness that comes with it but I don't know "severe water scarcity" ... even in townships in SA they'll tell you it's enough and they'll "hit you" if you waste any.
- Simboo 9mo agoDown with lawns!
- thechao 9mo agoOur least tasty crop!
- londons_explore 9mo agoI can assure you there is plenty of water. There are floods in lots of places every year. The oceans are full of water that for just 5kWh we can desalinate 250 gallons. The problem is that the water and energy aren't where the users want it to be. But pipes are relatively cheap - if humanity cared enough, we could build pipes to distribute the plentiful water everywhere. But it turns out the people without much water tend to be in very poor places and warzones where there isn't much appetite for spending money on pipes.
- pfdietz 9mo agoThere are also impediments to the economically rational allocation of water. Look at California for a prime example of this.
- calvinmorrison 9mo agotheres no drought in california. if we wanted to tomorrow we could stop it. its like complaining you are sweaty after working out
- bryanlarsen 9mo agoPedantically, you're correct. There's been drought in California for the previous 24 years, but this year there isn't one.
- rationalist 9mo ago> allocation of water I thought the GP was referring to the water allocated to farming.
- ajross 9mo ago> theres no drought in california. CA is not in a drought right now. CA has been in conditions of persistent drought, with no more than a year or two of respite, for two decades. The last sustained period of sustained at-or-above-desired-level precipitation ended in 2007. As always, Wikipedia explains this well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droughts_in_California https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droughts_in_California Your logic amounts to "I'm not poor because I just got paid! Let's go to the bar tonight!"
- anonym29 9mo ago[flagged]
- phanimahesh 9mo ago> Water bankruptcy refers to “a state in which a human-water system has spent beyond its hydrological means for so long that it can no longer satisfy the claims upon it without inflicting unacceptable or irreversible damage to nature.”
- codyb 9mo agoLol... really? Are you as a poor Iraqi villager able to make use of this information when you need water? Or poor Indian person?
- darkerside 9mo agoThat sounds more like isolated pockets of water bankruptcy than global water bankruptcy
- codyb 9mo agoOkay, so then you should read the article? "Four billion people face severe water scarcity for at least one month each year, and almost 75 percent of the global population lives in water-insecure or critically water-insecure countries, according to the U.N. report." But thanks for pointing out that what I provided was examples.
- anonym29 9mo agoCall me crazy, but I'd make the case that humans should settle in places with nearby freshwater, rather than deserts, and should avoid widespread cultural acceptance of defecating and throwing trash into what would otherwise be freshwater rivers.
- codyb 9mo agoAh yes, it's just dirty Indians polluting the Ganges. And dumb Iraqis settling in the desert. Crazy's probably not the word I'd reserve for you.
- blell 9mo ago[flagged]
- figmert 9mo agoWhat a strange response. What would be the reason to tell a respected body to shut up?
- MeteorMarc 9mo agoAnd all these huge new data centers are gonna make things worse: https://www.eesi.org/articles/view/data-centers-and-water-consumption https://www.eesi.org/articles/view/data-centers-and-water-co...
- pfdietz 9mo agoThe idea that data centers are huge water hogs is nonsense.
- margalabargala 9mo agoData centers consume enormous amounts of water for evaporative cooling. What part is nonsense? If the data center is built somewhere with ample water supplies this isn't an issue. If it's pulling from groundwater this can be a huge issue. Groundwater isn't infinite and is being depleted in many areas.
- estearum 9mo agoI was under the impression they capture the evaporation, let it cool, and recycle it?
- sidewndr46 9mo agoI guess it's possible to have a condensing station, but generally speaking you'd need to supply input energy to allow it to cool down and condense somehow. The bigger question here is if a datacenter using evaporative cooling where does the moisture go? If it just feeds a cloud system that rains on nearby fields, it's not much different than irrigating crops. If it feeds clouds that go offshore and rain into the ocean, it's similar to just diverting drinking water into the ocean
- 306bobby 9mo agoI must be missing something, why can't it be entirely closed loop like a water radiator in an old car? A simple fan running through large radiator cores would certainly condense within the system, keeping the water in the system
- phanimahesh 9mo agoBefore commenting water is cheap and plentiful please read the proposed definition. > Water bankruptcy refers to “a state in which a human-water system has spent beyond its hydrological means for so long that it can no longer satisfy the claims upon it without inflicting unacceptable or irreversible damage to nature.”
- goodluckchuck 9mo agoAnything is true if you define the terms contrary to their meaning.
- miltonlost 9mo agoGood thing that isn't what happened with this sensible definition. What part of that definition do you object to?
- tdeck 9mo agoSo when you read "water bankruptcy", you assumed it meant a legal process where the world can apply to a court to have its water debt annulled and start again?
- funkyfiddler69 9mo ago[flagged]
- dwedge 9mo agoThis really made me laugh, but at the same time "water bankruptcy" doesn't mean anything before this statement but bankruptcy did. The term was chosen to give the same kind of emotional reaction as bankruptcy
- funkyfiddler69 9mo agowait, is that why "humanity" redefines and reinterprets words and meanings all the time?
- d--b 9mo ago
- tromp 9mo agoI find this other article [1] more informative, including for instance the global map of Vulnerability to Water-Related Challenges taken from the actual report [2]. [1] https://www.thebrighterside.news/post/our-world-is-entering-an-era-of-global-water-bankruptcy-un-scientists-declare/ https://www.thebrighterside.news/post/our-world-is-entering-... [2] https://collections.unu.edu/eserv/UNU:10445/Global_Water_Bankruptcy_Report__2026_.pdf https://collections.unu.edu/eserv/UNU:10445/Global_Water_Ban...
- jmclnx 9mo agoI would no say the "world", but areas of it has as noted. Like South Asia, SW N America, N Africa and Spain. For many of these areas, desalination could meet the gap, but someone will need to pay for it. That is the main issue, no one wants to pay.
- bilsbie 9mo agoSounds like a bunch of useless scare mongering. Large scale Desalination is getting increasingly achievable: https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2022/11/20/we-need-more-water-than-rain-can-provide-refilling-rivers-with-desalination/ https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2022/11/20/we-need-more-w...
- hereme888 9mo agoReminds me of what's happening in Tehran, where they might have to relocate the capital due to severe, chronic mismanagement of their water supply.
- avereveard 9mo agohas Iran tried not to farm pistachios and watermelon in drought areas?
- frm88 9mo agoCalifornia farms alfalafa in drought areas. Also, the article is about water bancrupcy worldwide.
- alecco 9mo agoUN and EU push hard for the closure of reservoirs and dams then cry about lack of freshwater, and shout "climate change" when preventable floods cause mass casualties.
- frm88 9mo agoSedimentation and low filling levels, hence increasing costs. Also We found that 93% of studied reservoirs have not been fully filled up at least once during 2010–2022. Our analyses revealed that droughts are the most probable culprits. About 86% of the 398 reservoirs with accessible SPEI data exhibited significant susceptibility to drought, while 43% of the 525 reservoirs demonstrated notable sensitivity to ENSO events. Worth a read: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2024GL108934 https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/202...
- rtcode_io 9mo agoNobody believes UN.
- theturtle 9mo ago[dead]
- christkv 9mo agoI enjoy running these kind of articles through an analysis using chatgpt. Language matters and this is a pretty terribly slanted article trying to hype up fear. Sometimes I wonder if we would be better having a plugin that did this kind of analysis to give you a pointer towards if the writer is even trying to do their job of being objective or think they need to "make the news" to save the world. The Smithsonian article uses a well-known set of high-impact narrative devices—catastrophic metaphor, point-of-no-return language, scale shock, authority stacking, vivid exemplars, moralization, and fear-to-action solution framing—to intensify perceived urgency and motivate concern.
- credit_guy 9mo agoNot sure the choice of the word "bankruptcy" is meaningful. "Bankruptcy" is short for "bankruptcy protection", where an insolvent debtor tells a court they have no way of paying back all their current debts with whatever assets they have, and the court deals with the creditors and restructures all those debts in an equitable way (according to the law), so the debtors liability is limited. This is one of the cornerstones of capitalism, the limited liability concept. When it comes to nature, there is no limited liability. If you don't have water, you don't have water, there's no way to get any "bankruptcy protection" from anyone.
- ChrisArchitect 9mo ago[dupe] Earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46696347 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46696347
- daft_pink 9mo agoCounrterpoint… israel