“We’ve broken the water cycle, destroyed ecosystems and contaminated groundwater,” Antonio Guterres said at the three-day summit in New York, which gathers some 6,500 participants including a dozen heads of state and government.
“We are draining humanity’s lifeblood through vampiric overconsumption and unsustainable use, and evaporating it through global heating,” Guterres told the conference.
A report by UN-Water and UNESCO released Tuesday warned of too little or too much water in some places, and contaminated water in others—conditions it said highlight the imminent risk of a global water crisis.
“If nothing is done… it will keep on being between 40 percent and 50 percent of the population of the world that does not have access to sanitation and roughly 20-25 percent of the world will not have access to safe water supply,” report lead author Richard Connor told AFP.
With the global population increasing every day, “in absolute numbers, there’ll be more and more people that don’t have access to these services,” he said.
The report also warned that water “scarcity is becoming endemic” due to overconsumption and pollution, while global warming will increase seasonal water shortages in both areas with abundant water as well as those already strained.
“About 10 percent of the world’s population lives in a country where water stress has reached a high or critical level,” the report said.
According to the most recent UN climate study, published Monday by the IPCC expert panel, “roughly half of the world’s population currently experience severe water scarcity for at least part of the year.”
Those shortages have the most significant impact on the poor, Connor told AFP.
“No matter where you are, if you are rich enough, you will manage to get water,” he said.’
The report noted the impact of water supplies becoming contaminated due to under-performing or nonexistent sanitation systems.
“At least 2 billion people (globally) use a drinking water source contaminated with faeces, putting them at risk of contracting cholera, dysentery, typhoid and polio,” it said.
That high number does not take into account pollution from pharmaceuticals, chemicals, pesticides, microplastics and nanomaterials.