UN Study Warns of Global 'Water Bankruptcy' Hitting American Southwest

A new report from the United Nations University’s Institute for Water, Environment and Health warns the world is entering an era of global "water bankruptcy," in which human use of rivers, lakes and aquifers has exceeded what climate and hydrology can reliably replenish. The study says many river basins and aquifers have been overdrawn for at least five decades, half of the world’s large lakes have lost water since the early 1990s and more than 1 billion acres of natural wetlands — an area about the size of continental Europe — have disappeared, erasing key flood‑and‑drought buffers. About 75% of the world’s population now lives in countries classified as water‑insecure or critically water‑insecure; roughly 4 billion people face severe water scarcity at least one month a year, 3.5 billion lack safely managed sanitation and 2.2 billion lack safely managed drinking water. The report flags the Middle East and North Africa, parts of South Asia and the American Southwest as among the regions in "post‑crisis" failure, warning that shrinking and polluted water sources are already driving up food prices, undermining farm livelihoods and fueling migration and geopolitical instability. Authors urge a rapid shift to "water‑smart" agriculture, large‑scale restoration of wetlands and other natural storage, and governance reforms to share unavoidable losses more fairly or risk escalating fragility and conflict.