Jauhn Etienne Villaruel

Children spend time at the breakwater near a fishing village in Davao City on May 10, 2022. George Calvelo, ABS-CBN News/File

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Agence France-Presse

<div><span class="fr-img-caption fr-fic fr-dib" style="width:960px;display:block" width="960"><span class="fr-img-wrap"><img src="https://od2-image-api.abs-cbn.com/prod/editorImage/17689554184711749398193533EMBED_20220510-davao-dailies-GC-9.jpg" style="width:960px" class="fr-fic fr-dib" width="960"/><span class="fr-inner" style="text-align:left">Children spend time at the breakwater near a fishing village in Davao City on May 10, 2022. George Calvelo, ABS-CBN News/File<br/></span></span></span></div><div><br/></div><p>PARIS, France — The world is entering an era of &quot;global water bankruptcy&quot; with rivers, lakes and aquifers depleting faster than nature can replenish them, a United Nations research institute said on Tuesday.</p><div><a href="https://www.abs-cbn.com/news/health-science/2025/6/8/world-leaders-urged-to-step-up-for-overexploited-oceans-0015">World leaders urged to step up for overexploited oceans</a></div><p>It argues that decades of overuse, pollution, environmental destruction and climate pressure had pushed many water systems so beyond the point of recovery that a new classification was required.</p><p>&quot;Water stress and water crisis are no longer sufficient descriptions of the world&#x27;s new water realities,&quot; read a new report by the UN University Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH).</p><p>These terms were &quot;framed as alerts about a future that could still be avoided&quot; when the world had already moved into a &quot;new phase&quot;, it said.</p><p>The report proposes the alternative term &quot;water bankruptcy&quot; -- a state in which long-term water use exceeds resupply and damages nature so severely that previous levels cannot realistically be restored.</p><p>This was reflected in the shrinking of the world&#x27;s large lakes, the report said, and the growing number of major rivers failing to reach the sea for parts of the year.</p><p>The world has lost enormous proportions of wetlands, with roughly 410 million hectares -- nearly the size of the European Union -- disappearing over the past five decades.</p><p>Groundwater depletion is another sign of this bankruptcy.</p><p>Around 70 percent of major aquifers used for drinking water and irrigation show long-term declines with rising &quot;day zero&quot; crises -- when demand exceeds supply -- the &quot;urban face&quot; of this new reality.</p><p>Climate change was compounding the problem, spurring the loss of more than 30 percent of the world&#x27;s glacier mass since 1970 and the seasonal meltwater relied upon by hundreds of millions of people.</p><div><br/></div><div><strong>&#x27;BE HONEST&#x27; </strong></div><div><br/></div><p>The consequences were visible on every inhabited continent, but not every country individually was water bankrupt, UNU-INWEH director and report author Kaveh Madani told AFP.</p><p>Madani said the phenomenon was a &quot;warning&quot; that a policy rethink was essential.</p><p>Instead of approaching water scarcity as something temporary, governments must &quot;be honest&quot; and &quot;file for bankruptcy today rather than delaying this decision&quot;, he said.</p><p>&quot;Let&#x27;s adopt this framework. Let&#x27;s understand this. Let us recognize this bitter reality today before we cause more irreversible damages,&quot; Madani added.</p><p>The report draws on existing data and statistics and does not provide an exhaustive record of all water problems, but attempts instead to redefine the situation.</p><p>It is based on a peer-reviewed report, soon to be published in the journal Water Resources Management, that will formally propose a definition of &quot;water bankruptcy&quot;.</p><p>The report &quot;captures a hard truth: the world&#x27;s water crisis has crossed a point of no return&quot;, Tim Wainwright, chief executive of the WaterAid charity, wrote in a statement.</p><p>Some scientists not involved in the report welcomed the spotlight on water but warned that the global picture varied considerably and a blanket declaration might overlook progress being made at a local level.</p><div><br/></div><div><strong>© Agence France-Presse</strong></div><div><br/></div><div><br/></div><div><strong>RELATED VIDEO</strong></div><div><br/></div><div><span class="fr-video fr-deletable fr-fvc fr-dvb fr-draggable" contenteditable="false" draggable="true"><iframe width="640" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_taGk2VmsTQ?&amp;wmode=opaque&amp;rel=0" frameBorder="0" allowfullscreen="" class="fr-draggable"></iframe></span><br/></div>

<p>The world is entering an era of "global water bankruptcy" with rivers, lakes and aquifers depleting faster than nature can replenish them, a United Nations research institute said on Tuesday.</p>

The world is entering an era of "global water bankruptcy" with rivers, lakes and aquifers depleting faster than nature can replenish them, a United Nations research institute said on Tuesday.

UN report declares global state of 'water bankruptcy'

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UN report declares global state of 'water bankruptcy'

Agence France-Presse

Published January 21, 2026 08:31 AM PHT

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