The World Meteorological Organization’s State of Global Water Resources report is in its third year now. That State is, apparently, bad.
“As a result of rising temperatures, the hydrological cycle has accelerated,” said WMO secretary-general Celeste Saulo upon the latest report’s release on Monday. “It has also become more erratic and unpredictable, and we are facing growing problems of either too much or too little water.”
Too much — the floods in central Europe or West Africa or Vietnam and Myanmar or North Carolina. Too little — the parched Amazon basin, so drought-stricken that fires continue to rage and authorities are planning to dredge portions of the river to allow its diminished flow to continue. “Water is the canary in the coalmine of climate change,” Saulo said.
The highlights of this year’s report are grim: 2023 was the driest year for the world’s rivers in 33 years. More than half of all rivers were “abnormal” last year, and most of those were below their usual flow. Glaciers lost 600 billion tons of water in 2023, the largest loss in 50 years of observations. “Notable” depletion of groundwater resources took place in North America and Europe. In total, 3.6 billion people do not have adequate access to water at least one month out of the year; that number is projected to rise to more than 5 billion by mid-century.
“We receive distress signals in the form of increasingly extreme rainfall, floods and droughts which wreak a heavy toll on lives, ecosystems and economies,” Saulo said. “Melting ice and glaciers threaten long-term water security for many millions of people. And yet we are not taking the necessary urgent action.”