2024 UN Water Development Report released

The 2024 edition of the United Nations World Water Development Report (UN WWDR) calls attention to the complex and interlinked relationships between water, prosperity and peace, describing how progress in one dimension can have positive, often essential, repercussions on the others.

Short Summary
•    Water security leads to prosperity and peace, while the hardships of conflict are amplified through water.
•    Water directly supports billions of livelihoods and can promote peace.
•    Water nurtures prosperity by meeting basic human needs, supporting health, livelihoods and economic development, underpinning food and energy security, and defending environmental integrity.
•    Water influences the economy in many ways, and global trade dynamics and market adaptations can have direct repercussions on the water use of regional and local economies. The water-related impacts of conflict are multi-faceted and often indirect, such as those linked to forced migration and increased exposure to health threats.
•    Climate change, geopolitical unrest, pandemics, mass migration, hyperinflation and other crises can exacerbate water access inequalities. In nearly all cases, the poorest and most vulnerable groups are those that suffer the greatest risks to their well-being.

Statistics
Facts and figures on the state of the world’s freshwater resources from the 2024 UN WWDR:

Water demand and use
•    Worldwide, agriculture accounts for roughly 70% of freshwater withdrawals, followed by industry (just under 20%) and domestic (or municipal) uses (about 12%).
•    Groundwater supplies about 25% of all water used for irrigation and half of the freshwater withdrawn for domestic purposes.
•    Since 1980s the global demand for freshwater has been increasing by just under 1% per year during this period.
•    Water demand from the municipal sector has experienced a considerable increase relative to the other sectors and is likely to continue growing as populations urbanize and the water supply and sanitation systems servicing these cities expand.

Water availability and stress
•    Roughly half of the world’s population experiences severe water scarcity for at least part of the year.
•    Water deficits were linked to a 10% increase in global migration between 1970–2000.

Water quality and pollution
•    In lower-income countries, poor water quality is due to low levels of wastewater treatment. whereas in higher-income countries, runoff from agriculture poses the most serious problem.
•    Emerging contaminants include pharmaceuticals, hormones, industrial chemicals, detergents, cyanotoxins, per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) and nanomaterials.

Extreme events
•    Floods and drought are among the most devastating water-related disasters.
•    Over the period 2002–2021, floods caused nearly 100,000 deaths (with an additional 8,000 in 2022), affected another 1.6 billion people (with another 57 million in 2022) and caused US$832 billion in economic losses (US$45 billion in 2022).
•    Over the same period, droughts affected over 1.4 billion people, killed over 21,000 more and triggered US$170 billion in economic losses.
•    Continued global warming is projected to intensify the global water cycle, and to further increase the frequency and severity of droughts and floods, with more very wet and very dry weather and climate events, and seasons.

Progress towards Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6
•    SDG 6 seeks to ensure the availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all.
•    None of the SDG 6 targets appear to be on track.
•    As of 2022, 2.2 billion people were without access to safely managed drinking water (SDG Target 6.1).
•    Four out of five people lacking at least basic drinking water services in 2022 lived in rural areas. 

•    The situation with respect to safely managed sanitation (SDG Target 6.2) remains dire, with 3.5 billion people lacking access to such services.