The Current - The world has entered its water bankruptcy era

Episode Date: January 30, 2026

According to the UN, the world is entering an era of “water bankruptcy,” a term scientists are using to describe what happens when water use outpaces nature’s ability to recover. In this conversation, we unpack what that actually means, and why many water systems are no longer bouncing back even after rains return. We hear from Kaveh Madani, the author of a new UN report, and the Director of the Institute for Water, Environment and Health at United Nations University. 

This is the sound of your legacy ERP. Silo data, broken processes, nothing works in harmony. With Workday, you get a next-gen ERP that unites your people in finance on a single AI platform so you can be future ready. Workday, the AI platform for HR and finance. This is a CBC podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is the current podcast. The UN is warning that water scarcity around the world has evolved beyond crisis levels. A new report is using the term water bankruptcy to describe the situation where people are using more water than the Earth can naturally replenish.

The consequences of pollution, overuse, and extreme climate events are being felt on every continent. Africa being one of the hardest hit. Laura and Cua is a climate adaptation and sustainability expert in Zambia. People end up curing for hours just to collect water, or they're forced to use alternative sources that aren't always safe. When males and streams dry up during the whole season, it's usually the women and girls who have to walk long distances to find water. The UN research says that nearly half the global population now lives with severe water scarcity for at least one month of the year. Kave Medani is the author of the report and the director of the Institute for Water Environment and Health, United Nations University. He is in Toronto. Good morning. Good morning. Thanks for your interest in water.

I mentioned it briefly, but can you explain what water bankruptcy means in practical terms? I think the analogy should make it clear that we are talking about something very striking or alarming. And we're talking about a state of failure, just like financial bankruptcy, water bankruptcy happens when The overuse of water is happening for too long, meaning that the amount of use of humans is beyond the renewal rates by nature through precipitation. So the recharge, the income we get from nature is not sufficient to satisfy our demand. And we have to use our reserves like groundwater. So first we start using our checking account, surface water. Then we go to our savings account, groundwater.

and then we have a lot of users but not enough water left in our system. And then we start damaging the environment because we're stealing the share of the environment. And then we see one damage after another. Lots of signs. And that's why we wanted to warn about this state, call it a bankruptcy, meaning that something is fundamentally wrong, but it's not the end of the world. And still there might be a chance.

Where is all the water going? What's it being used for? So we have different uses, as you know. Water is needed for drinking and sanitation, showering, cooking and so on. Our daily uses, we need water to produce food. 70% of water in the world is used for agricultural purposes, the water that we throw.

We use water to produce energy. Here in Canada, we use it a lot for hydropower production, for nuclear energy and so on. And now we need it for data centers and cooling. It's used for any sort of production. So it's a component that is part of anything we use and anything we do. And for that matter, when we consume it at some point, we run out of it, or we pollute it to the extent that it's not usable anymore.

How can this be? I mean, when we look at the globe and the planet, we are a planet covered in water. So to think of it as bankruptcy, I mean, how do you convince me, people that were in such a crisis? Should we look at the signs and signals we get from the planet? First of all, there's plenty of water when we look at the Earth, but let's not forget most of that water is salty and not usable.

So we're talking about freshwater here. So we have rivers and we have groundwater and lakes and reservoirs. So what we see around the world is telling us that something is going wrong. because we have shrinking lakes, rivers, and wetlands. We have declining aquifer levels. As a result of that, we have land subsidence and sinkholes. Then we have increased desertification, sand and dust storms, more wildfires, deforestation, and biodiversity laws. So all of these signals are telling us that something is wrong.

We also have glaciers and other major savings that are melting around. around the world. So when we say the world has entered the era of water bankruptcy, we don't mean that every nation, every location, every aquifer has gone bankrupt, but we mean that we have enough systems around the world that have passed that stage of recovery, like they have lost their capacity to restore their past, that we've got to be very concerned because we are interconnected not only through the climate system, but through trade, of food and goods through immigration systems, geopolitics, economics, and so on. So we are very interconnected. So the whole global risk landscape has changed significantly, and that's very alarming and concerning. I want to ask you about some specifics in a moment, but why has it become harder to restore and replenish our core freshwater resources?

I mean, you mentioned industry, AI, power, generation, agriculture, but we've always had those. Why is it becoming harder to replenish? So population is increasing, our demand is increasing. We have had technologies, but what we are expanding, right? So our use, our energy use has continued to expand, our agricultural water demand has continued to expand because the land area under cultivation is increasing to feed the global population. So none of our societies has stopped using water. We have just expanded the use of energy,

expanded the use of water, expanded the use of food. So as demand continues to grow and then on the other side, you have declining resources and a situation that is exacerbated by climate change, which makes water less available in some areas, which makes crops thirsty or in some other areas, and then you have less water to generate electricity. You need more electricity to pump water out of the ground. So our demand continues to increase, and our supplies continue to become less and less.

And we haven't stopped, we haven't changed. we haven't changed our behavior in any way. So this gap is continuing to expand in certain areas. And what the report tells us, which is very important, is that the issue is not limited to the dry areas of the world. The issue is not limited to the global south or poor economies. We are seeing this situation around the world. Even in Alberta, Canada, we are struggling

because when you have all these needs at the same time and you're expanding and you're expanding your urban areas, you're expanding your agriculture, the energy sector and data sector and so on, you would face a limit and water must be understood as a limit to growth. Well, let's talk some specifics. You mentioned Alberta. How do you see water bankruptcy in Alberta? I would say we've got to be careful about calling Alberta a water bankrupt system because we're lucky in Canada. To begin with, we are very rich compared to the rest of the world, but we are seeing these signs when farmers are struggling, when we are seeing increased

wildfire frequency, and we are seeing fights among stakeholders or struggles to get permits and so on, that means that something is wrong with the system. We go to the south of this country, let's go, you know, let's mention Colorado River system, very famous. We see states are fighting. There's a transboundary system going through different states and also like, at the end toward Mexico, and the states over Colorado River system are fighting and having conflicts over water allocation. And if you look at Lake Mead, for example, the largest reservoir in the United States, it has been at its lowest level in its history just recently.

And we see different cities are struggling. We see the great salt lakes in Utah that is having problems. We are seeing declining groundwater levels in central valley. California, we're seeing cities like Los Angeles or Las Vegas struggling with water. And you go to even further south, you see the city of the Mexico city, the Mexico city is subsiding for 25 centimeters a year as a result of too much groundwater withdrawal. And this is just what's happening in this side of the planet. Now, you go to the other parts of the world, the Middle East and North Africa.

You see Saudi Arabia has exhausted its groundwater resources. in deep trouble in that regard. You see Tehran that was recently going through day zero, a country that is now struggling with all those tensions and massacre and the tension that is being fueled by some of the environmental issues that they have. And you go to India, same thing. You go to different parts of Africa. You just heard it from your guests that people are struggling.

And signs and manifestations of water bankruptcy are. appearing in different forms. In Asia, actually, we have high levels of pollution, even though we have water on paper. They have water on paper, but that water is not usable. So these manifestations convince us that this is happening all around the world. So you started by comparing water bankruptcy to financial bankruptcy. If we follow that analogy, what are the solutions to what's happening? So the very first thing is accepting the failure, right? So bankrupt. is when the moment that you accept that something is wrong, the business model is not working,

and there is a need for a fresh new start, a transformative change. And communicating to all the creditors that we don't have enough water, and one of the significant or most important steps to take is to close the gap between supply and demand, and that means demand reduction and consumption reduction, something we have not been pursuing. But accepting also,

that this business model, this lifestyle, this development model that we have had, that heavily relied on increasing supply through technology, through building more dams, digging deeper wells, transferring water from one location to another, desalinating more water would not work. So we need that. One thing that the report also says that despite this issue, yeah, this is a failure of human beings, a lot of systems have lost their capacity to bounce back because nature has some generosity and can tolerate a bit of pressure, but after that, then it loses its ability to bounce back. So we have this failure.

In bankruptcy, you accept that there is a failure. There are some stuff that you cannot fix or mitigate anymore, but there are major things that you can still do to mitigate, plus you have to adapt to a new reality, a new reality that is more restricted than before. you have less resources available and you have to adjust to it. So the report says that in this fragmented world we live in, water is one of those issues that we can focus on and unite around

because it's the issue of conservatives and liberals, it's the issue of rural areas and urban populations, it's the issue of global south and north, something that is very unique and we haven't spoken about. And this can be an opportunity for the world to admit this failure and do things differently. And we have just a moment left, but if we don't, what's at stake if we don't start acting on this? Our future, it's an existential threat.

And one of the biggest consequences is for the farmers who withdraw 70% of the water around the world. They provide not only our food in the global north, but also their own food and employment and so on. Lack of water for them means lost employment. That means migration, means tension, wars and internal. conflict. So that means national security and international security is at stake. Mr. Medani, thank you very much for speaking with us. Thanks for having me. Kavi Medani is the author of the UN report on water bankruptcy.

He is the director of the Institute for Water, Environment and Health at United Nations University. We reached him in Toronto. This has been the current podcast. You can hear our show Monday to Friday on CBC Radio 1 at 8.30 a.m. all time zones. You can also listen online at cbc.ca.ca.com or on the CBC Listen app or wherever you get your podcasts. My name is Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca.ca slash podcasts.