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The importance of water sustainability

Water is the largest natural resource but only 3% of it is freshwater, of which just 1/3 is accessible for use in agriculture and cities. The rest is frozen in glaciers or hidden too deep underground.

Today, the main water source for over 2 billion people are aquifers – underground stores of freshwater. As income levels have risen globally, so has the demand for water-intensive goods such as manufactured, meat, and dairy products, stressing global freshwater resources.

Such increase in global freshwater consumption has led to the depletion of over half of the world’s largest aquifers, and is a problem that will likely deteriorate as demand grows. At this pace, available freshwater reserves needed to ensure basic water, food, and energy security are predicted to drop by 40%.

As the world warms, climate change can threaten ecosystems and environments that protect vital water resources, limiting access to them even more.

Water in a changing climate

It is uncertain how climate change will affect rainfall patterns. However, the direction of change and current impacts are largely known.

From lengthy droughts in California to floods that rocked South-East Asia at the end of last year, water is at the heart of natural disasters that occur more frequently as the climate changes. 

“We have a basis for making policy and investment decisions now,” said Knut Roland Sundstrom, Climate Change Specialist for the GEF. “In the near term, we can prepare by investing in water harvesting and storage infrastructure. Mechanisms such as the GEF-managed Least Developed Countries Fund and Special Climate Change Funds can help fill some of these investment gaps.”

Water consumerism in agriculture

The agricultural sector guzzles 70% of the world’s annual water consumption, and it will be one of the first to feel the strain as demand supersedes water capacity.

“We are already seeing groundwater depletion in many areas,” highlighted Sundstrom. “Where there isn’t sufficient capacity to meet demands, we will see production decrease, which will directly affect farmers’ income and food security.”

Making modern agriculture less water intensive is a global task that the GEF is working to fulfil through:

• Agroforestry: Maintaining vegetation is key to reducing ground water runoff and preventing land degradation. However, the expansion of agricultural or pasture land often goes hand in hand with deforestation. In Colombia, the GEF is working with herders to maintain the tree cover, letting cattle graze in the shade. It has not only improved the productivity of pastures, but also reduced water consumption.
• Wetlands Preservation: wetlands are natural buffers that protect freshwater from contamination and dry spells. In Burkina Faso, overgrazing degraded pasture land and water resources. A Least Developed Countries Fund project to better manage the Mare d’Oursi Wetlands Basin in the country’s north will help farmers withstand the effects of climate change. It will also ensure maintenance of the lakes and streams they depend on to raise livestock.
• Food-Energy-Water Nexus: Just as ecosystems are interlinked, so are food, water and energy sectors. In the past decade, the GEF has championed an integrated nexus approach to promote water, food, and energy security.

The nexus approach is at the core of the GEF’s current four-year strategy that addresses water usage and waste at the ecosystem level across agriculture, energy, and urban environment.

Water in cities

According to the 2014 Nature Conservancy study, one in four large cities is water stressed.

Every day, cities across the world move 504 billion liters of water across 27,000 km to hydrate their populations and industries. For this purpose, watersheds are outstretched beyond their physical footprint.

Lima, according to the World Bank data, is the second biggest city in the world built in a desert. Here, the disproportionate growth of urban zones means that basic services are not readily available, and use of limited water resources is not efficient.

For Bogota, the Colombian capital, future water supply for its 7 million residents depends on the sustainable management of high-mountain wetlands and ecosystems in the Chingaza-Sumapaz-Guerrero corridor. These wetlands are far upstream from the urban zone and vulnerable to climate change. To preserve them, the GEF, through the Special Climate Change Fund, is helping national and municipal authorities take early action to adapt to the global warming effects on local water supplies.

Water sustainability in the future

2015 marks the end of a decade of action by the UN on promoting water and sanitation issue, a campaign which has seen an improvement in awareness of the threat that water sustainability poses both to sustainable development and political security.

Water sustainability is, therefore, at the core of GEF strategy until 2020. Failure to address unsustainable use of water now will mean greater struggles in the future to achieve goals in a myriad of other areas.

Protecting the environment for the coming generations begins with more effective water management today.    

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Think tanks and critical drivers of the future of water:

By engaging in thoughtful, intentional, and inclusive discourse resulting in bold, achievable goals, AWWA’s Water 2050 initiative will shape a long-term vision of the future of water that will chart a course for a successful and sustainable water sector.

Water 2050 Overview

Ultimately, Water 2050’s influence extends beyond the water community, fostering partnerships and cross-sector collaboration for mutual and global benefit.

Starting in 2022 and working through the end of 2023, Water 2050 will:

• Engaged in meaningful conversations. Thought leaders from within and outside the water sector gathered at intimate “think tanks” to examine the future of water through the prism of five key drivers.
• Enlisted strategic partners. Collaboration among water utilities, service providers, academia, water-sector organizations, and nontraditional partners will be essential. We also reached beyond the water sector to engage corporate water users, nonprofit organizations and other stakeholder groups for fresh insights.
• Fostered intergenerational responsibility. Today's and tomorrow’s water professionals and leaders must work together to create a successful future. The voices of young and emerging professionals remain an integral part of the initiative.
• Captured collective knowledge. AWWA issued reports on insights from each think tank and published additional guidance to support the water community in realizing the Water 2050 vision.

All of this supports the critical mission of the water community: safe water, healthy people and a sustainable planet by examining five drivers critical to the future of water.

Sustainability: Sept. 21-23, 2022 Technology: Dec. 5-7, 2022 Economics: Jan. 23-25, 2023 Governance: Feb. 27-March 1, 2023 Social/Demographics: April 26-28, 2023

Think Tanks Summary and Path Forward: A summary of each think tank and identifies the common themes that emerged from each.

Dear 2050 Video: Hopes and ideas about the water sector from 2023

Water StoryMaps Explore StoryMaps that contain real-life examples of projects, innovations, and strategies that inspired artistic renderings.

Get the report(s) summarizing each of the Water 2050 Think Tanks

• Events & Developments

Five Forces Driving the Future of Water

AWWA has identified five critical drivers that will influence progress toward a sustainable and resilient water future: sustainability, technology, economics, governance and social/demographic. These drivers will be considered by the Water 2050 think tanks and shape all future work supported by this initiative.

Sustainability . Managing our planet’s limited water resources and built infrastructure for water is paramount. Climate change is among the biggest risks. It will bring conditions that are more fierce and less predictable: extended droughts and heatwaves, increased hurricanes and wildfires, and severe winter storms. The future will require skillful and creative stewardship of our most vital natural resource, as well as innovative approaches to keep water infrastructure strong and resilient.

Technology . As the world enters the fourth industrial revolution, water professionals have access to new technologies that are changing the way they interact with water resources, water systems and the people they serve. Advances in data, analytics, the Internet of Things (IoT), machine learning and artificial intelligence will increasingly empower consumers and influence water system operations. Adoption of new technologies will solve complex problems and sometimes introduce unintended challenges.

Economics . Water is a critical economic engine for North American communities and across the globe. Increasingly, the water community is asked to do more with less, while also addressing rising infrastructure needs. We must consider important economic factors such as regionalization, supply chain resilience, decentralized treatment, ESG approaches to assessing risks and value, and the benefits of a circular economy. Rate-setting will occur in a world more keenly aware of equity and affordability challenges.

Governance . The roles of federal, provincial, state and local governments significantly impact how water utilities are operated and regulated. Both economics and governance will shape the model of tomorrow’s water utilities. Some communities may turn to regional solutions to gain efficiencies. As regulatory structures evolve, communities will have to evaluate new approaches, such as fit-for-purpose standards and decentralized treatment. 

Social/Demographics . Public interest and concern about water quality and equity is rising, which means all communities must work to strengthen public trust. Simultaneously, potential population shifts between urban and rural areas are creating resource and infrastructure challenges — while also forcing community-driven water solutions. Population growth in water-stressed communities will require innovative thinking to manage limited supplies. 

March 11, 2022: AWWA announces Water 2050 initiative . AWWA Connections article.

June 12-15, 2022: Water2050 at ACE22. This initiative was a hot topic at AWWA’s Annual Conference and Exposition (ACE22) in San Antonio, Texas.

• June 13:  A path to Water 2050 begins at ACE22 . AWWA Connections article.
• June 15: The Last Drop closing keynote panel focused on the Water 2050 initiative.
• The AWWA Pavilion in the Exhibit Hall featured a Water 2050 exhibit.
• A new video, The Future We Create , featured what AWWA Young Professionals are thinking about the future of water. This debuted at the conference and will be shown throughout the initiative.  

Sept 21-23, 2022: Water 2050 Think Tank 1 - Sustainability. Twenty-four thought leaders gathered in Las Vegas exploring the theme of sustainability.

Dec. 5-7, 2022: Water 2050 Think Tank 2 - Technology . Thought leaders met in Silicon Valley exploring the technology theme.

Jan. 23-25, 2023: Water 2050 Think Tank 3 - Economics . Twenty-six thought leaders met in New York City exploring the theme of economy.

Feb. 27-March 1, 2023: Water 2050 Think Tank 4 - Governance . Twenty-seven influential thinkers developed nine recommendations for the future of water governance.

April 26-28, 2023: Water 2050 Think Tank 5 - Social/Demographics . A diverse group of influential thinkers helped develop nine proactive recommendations considering key social and demographic shifts.

June 11-14, 2023: Water 2050 at ACE23 . This initiative will be a hot topic at AWWA’s Annual Conference and Exposition (ACE23) in Toronto, Canada.

AWWA Connections articles March 10, 2022 - AWWA launches Water 2050 initiative to prepare for sustainable water future June 9, 2022 - A path to Water 2050 begins at ACE22 June 13, 2022 - “5 Under 35” demonstrate capabilities of Water 2050 leaders October 5, 2022 - First Water 2050 think tank envisions the path to sustainability November 16, 2022 - AWWA Councils, think tanks contribute insights to Water 2050 initiative

Press Releases June 13, 2022 - AWWA’s ACE22 opens, Association launches Water 2050 initiative December 1, 2022 - AWWA releases insights report from Water 2050 Sustainability Think Tank January 19, 2023 - AWWA releases insights report from Water 2050 Technology Think Tank

Other July 6, 2022 -  WaterWorld interview with Melissa Elliott  

The future of water: How innovations will advance water sustainability and resilience worldwide

Chloë oliver viola.

Co-authored by  Nimesh Modak and Tom Ferguson .

As the global population hurtles towards 9.7 billion people by 2050, it has never been more important to produce more with less. As the water supply and sanitation (WSS) sector continues to face increasing pressures, especially due to the impacts of climate change, governments in the developing world will need to increase the sector’s resilience and sustainability. Innovation and technology have a vital role to play in scarcity and safety, water efficiency, utility operations, monitoring and treatment and data and analytics. Global entrepreneurs are witnessing a greater willingness by utilities and business to test and adopt promising technologies: the remote sensing of water, which can help with water accounting, non-revenue water remediation and much more; the internet of things, which enables smart irrigation, water quality control, and which, when coupled with new computing capacity, allows us to develop complex models for water management. Working with companies that offer the latest technological innovations in the sector can help advance such efforts. The World Bank, along with water innovation accelerator Imagine H2O, recently hosted a virtual event showcasing fourteen water technology businesses with especially promising products and services.

The World Bank has previously partnered with such businesses on different projects and initiatives. This includes Drinkwell , the inaugural winner of the Imagine H2O Urban Water Challenge, which the Water Global Practice connected with the Chittagong Water Supply and Sewerage Authority, leading to the first deployments of four water ATM booths providing safe drinking water access to 5,100 people. In cooperation with the utility, Drinkwell will be rolling out an additional 96 systems in 2020 and 2021 across Bangladesh’s second largest city.   

The businesses highlighted in the webinar, many of which are currently or have previously been part of Imagine H2O's accelerator programs, offer technologies that help utilities serve customers digitally, manage water resources remotely and in real time, empower farmers to make water smart decisions and utilize distributed technology to expand water and wastewater services to underserved communities.

Smarter Homes , for example, is a company that produces the WaterOn device, which is a smart metering and automated leakage prevention system. Thus far, the device has been used on apartment buildings in India and has helped save 40,000 households an average of 35 percent of water consumption. Meanwhile, in Bengaluru, its use saves roughly 71 million liters of water every month.

Technologies like the WaterOn system will be especially instrumental in helping governments achieve Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6 - ensuring the "availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all." Another part of this equation, however, is increasing access and delivery of WSS services to consumers. This is where companies like Wonderkid can be of great assistance. Wonderkid offers a mobile management platform so utilities can improve their customer care and billing services. It incorporates data insights to inform infrastructure investment planning, as well as regulatory oversight to monitor the compliance of service delivery standards to citizens. The platform has been used in over twenty utilities in Sub-Saharan Africa and has resulted in 500,000 people gaining access to safer and more reliable WSS services.

Jennifer Sara, the World Bank Water Global Practice's Global Director, has said that technology is a critical element that can help support us in improving water and sanitation sectors and strengthening water resources management. "It is a fundamental part of our three strategic objectives: ensuring sustainability, meeting basic needs, and taking into account long-term forces that are shaping the external environment."

One such basic need for every individual is being able to put food on the table. Doing so often requires that crops are in abundant supply, which can easily be jeopardized by droughts and other negative impacts of climate change. If farmers can optimize and increase crop yields, such impacts can be mitigated. Ignitia is a company that uses machine learning and remote sensing to send text messages to small-scale farmers with hyper-local information on climates and weather forecasts. The company has over one million subscribers in Ghana and other West African countries, and its technology has greatly benefitted farmers, which in turn can trickle down to consumers. The service has thus far led to a 65 percent average yield increase across different staples, and a $476 increase in average farmer income.

Oneka is another company that helps consumers obtain safe drinking water without utilizing land or emitting greenhouse gases. With a focus on Small Island Developing States, Oneka’s wave-powered desalination buoys convert ocean water to drinking water. Each buoy can produce 10m3 of drinking water per day, saving an estimated 34,000kg of CO2 per year. 

Sara says, however, that one trend in developing countries is that gaps in technical capacity, expertise and resources can prevent such technology from being sustainable and widespread. But with support and collaboration between stakeholders such as local governments and utility operators, as well as international organizations like the World Bank and innovation accelerators like Imagine H2O, these types of technologies and innovations can be implemented effectively in the developing world. While proper implementation and delivery won't happen instantaneously, it's the first of many important steps that will lead to widespread water sector sustainability and resilience.

The fourteen innovators showcased at Water Online Week represent a diverse range of solutions reimagining a water resilient future globally. To learn more about Imagine H2O’s portfolio and programs, visit www.imagineh2o.org .

• Arable (United States): Sensor and analytics platform that provides real-time, actionable insights with predictive capabilities for agriculture and food systems.
• Cloud to Street (United States): Flood risk detection through global satellites, machine learning and community intelligence. Targets 90% of households in emerging markets who are currently uninsured.
• Drinkwell (Bangladesh / India): Water ATMs for arsenic and fluoride affected communities through patented filtration technology, IOT enabled operations and pay-as-you-go cards.
• Ecosoftt (Singapore): Fit-for-purpose, low-cost wastewater and reuse solutions for communities not connected to water and sewer networks.
• Electrolytic Technologies (United States): Onsite chlorine generation eliminating costs and risks from transportation of chemicals to water and wastewater treatment plants.
• Fluid Robotics (India): In-pipe robotic mapping and assessment tools to detect leaks in distribution systems and prevent pollution runoff in urban waterways.
• Ignitia (Sweden / Ghana): Tropical weather forecasting platform that sends highly accurate, hyper-local forecasts to small-scale farmers via SMS.
• Oneka (Canada): Wave-powered desalination for autonomous drinking water production targeting small island communities.
• SatSure (India): Satellite remote sensing-based irrigation monitoring and decision making platform for governments.
• SmarterHomes (India): Smart metering and automated leakage prevention system for high-rise apartment buildings in urban India.
• SmartTerra (India): Operational intelligence for water and wastewater utilities to reduce losses, assess network health and improve revenue.
• Vassar Labs (India): Water management and forecasting platform for state government agencies using satellite imagery, in-situ sensors and predictive analytics.
• Veracet (United States): DNA fingerprinting technology and analytics platform to identify the source of contamination in water.
• Wonderkid (Kenya): Mobile water management platform for water utilities to improve the quality of their customer care and billing services.
• Agriculture and Food
• Climate Change

Senior Water Supply and Sanitation Specialist, Water Global Practice, World Bank Group

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Understanding the value of water for sustainable development

March 26, 2021.

Angela Lusigi

UNDP Resident Representative in Ghana

Water is the central nervous system in the fight to create resilient and low carbon economies to build back better from the impacts of COVID-19. Access to water and sanitation for all which is Goal 6 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) contributes to the achievement of most of the SDGs.

Yet 785 million people worldwide still lack safe water. Of these, 490 million live in sub-Saharan Africa mainly in rural areas. In Ghana, though the country has made significant progress in ensuring access to clean water, nearly three million people rely on surface water to meet their daily needs. This leaves them vulnerable to water-related illness and disease. Ghana’s recent environmental analysis report indicates that the cost of environmental degradation due to water pollution is equivalent to three percent of GDP.

Valuing water was the theme for this year's World Water Day. This is apt as many communities struggle to maintain the high level of hygiene required in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. Appreciating the true value of water will prompt us to take action to protect this vital resource for the benefit of all.

The availability of water is falling over time and water crisis is the fifth highest risk to society according to the 2020 edition of the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks report . Ghana’s Voluntary National Review report on the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development reveals that water availability per capita has decreased but remains above the threshold for water stress (1700m3 per capita). However, climate change could significantly affect water resource availability especially in the Northern Savannah ecological zone.

In this Decade of Action, in the lead up to the 2030 Agenda, valuing the multiple uses of water, from agriculture to power generation, transport, industry, domestic use, ecosystems, fisheries, and livelihoods will help transform this looming crisis into an opportunity for advancing sustainable development. There are three reasons to be optimistic.

Growing momentum for an integrated water resources governance and planning

There is increasing recognition of the power of better planning and integrated governance of water resources to enhance climate resilience. Effective regulatory frameworks and tools for managing and protecting water resources are helping to improve water security. Public awareness and education in water resource management is also growing. And so are improvements in transboundary and international cooperation in the management of shared water resources. However, gaps still exist in these lofty plans. The activities of many small-scale illegal gold miners - “galamsayers”, whose livelihoods depend on mining - are depleting water bodies and raising the cost of clean water. Protecting these resources requires addressing the needs of small-scale mining without undermining the achievement of the SDGs particularly SDG 6.

Ambitious climate plans present opportunities

Ghana is updating its Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) to raise ambition as part of its commitment under the Paris Agreement on climate change. The ongoing update is an opportunity to ensure sustainable water management. This must ensure efficient irrigation and drainage systems, basin management, wastewater recycling and reuse, and rainwater harvesting in Ghana’s climate plans for a more inclusive, resilient and low carbon development.

A transition to renewable energy will reduce the stress on available water resources in the face of a changing climate. Effective implementation of Ghana’s Renewable Energy Master Plan, developed by the Government, with support from UNDP, will promote the transfer of Ghana’s rich renewable energy resources towards a low carbon economy.

Ensuring gender equality in water resources management is a smart investment

Addressing the differentiated impact of climate change on women and men opens up new opportunities to free up time for more productive use. According to the Ghana Statistical Service, 21 percent of women as against 17 percent of men spend about one to three hours a day collecting drinking water when they don’t have it in their homes. In drought prone areas affected by desertification, particularly in northern Ghana, women and girls especially spend an average of 43.5 hours per week getting water for farming. Lessons from the government and UNDP supported climate adaptation project, funded by the Adaptation Fund, showed that investments in water infrastructure can reduce burdens on women and girls. The project , which has provided 145 boreholes in 50 communities, is benefiting more than 40,000 people mainly women and children because of their distinct roles in water collection and usage.

Looking forward

The cord that binds “people, planet, and prosperity” together is the value that water provides. So, unsustainable management of water resources is a recipe for the destruction of the planet that people depend on and ultimately our collective prosperity. The  recent UNDP  Human Development report : The Next Frontier: Human Development and the Anthropocene’ argues that as people and planet enter a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene or the Age of Humans, it is time for all countries to redesign their paths to progress by fully accounting for the dangerous pressures humans put on the planet. The planet cannot survive without water and this calls for investments in water infrastructure.

In this regard, the new UNDP’s SDGs Investor Map for Ghana identified investment opportunities in key areas including sanitation services, for unserved areas. The map also provides market intelligence on investment opportunities in the provision of affordable irrigation solar systems and water dams. These highlight emerging opportunities for the government, private sector and citizens to advance development by valuing water. Protecting this valuable resource and reclaiming water bodies destroyed by unsustainable use provides significant investment opportunities for private investors in the water sector.

Water governance should be reinforced at all levels- local, regional and national, to ensure the reliable delivery of water for priority uses, especially for domestic, and agriculture to head off potential crop failures.

The truth is that we cannot live without water, and this requires water bodies to be clean and safe, and citizens have an important role to play. By changing behaviour, people can be the key to a healthy environment and a healthy life for all.   

Editor’s Note: This piece was originally published in ModernGhana .

UNDP’s NDC Support Programme is funded by the European Union and the governments of Germany and Spain as a contribution to the NDC Partnership.

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ENCYCLOPEDIC ENTRY

Sustainable development goal 6: clean water and sanitation.

The Sustainable Development Goals were adopted by the United Nations in 2015 to work toward a sustainable and poverty-free world by 2030. Goal 6, in particular, seeks to ensure that people have access to clean water and adequate sanitation services worldwide.

Biology, Health, Conservation

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The members of the United Nations (UN) adopted the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015. These 17 goals are designed to unite nations in the common cause of ensuring the general welfare of all humans by the year 2030. These goals include a focus on ending poverty, tackling climate change , and maintaining high standards of resources.

SDG 6 focuses on ensuring a clean and stable water supply and effective water sanitation for all people by the year 2030. The goal is a reaction to the fact that many people throughout the world lack these basic services. About 40 percent of the world’s population is affected by a lack of water. As global temperatures rise, that total is expected to increase. Already, some of the poorest countries in the world are affected by drought , resulting in famine and malnutrition . Throughout the world, about 1.7 billion people live in a watershed where water is used faster than the watershed can be replenished. According to some estimates, if such trends continue, one in four people, or more, might experience water shortages on a regular basis by the year 2050.

Compounding the problem of water scarcity is the lack of reliable sanitation throughout the world. More than two billion people worldwide lack basic sanitation services, such as simple latrines or toilets. More than 890 million of those people live in regions where “open defecation” occurs. This means that human waste is left in the open. Adding to the issue is the fact that 80 percent of wastewater throughout the planet is emptied into the ocean or rivers without proper waste removal.

Alarmed by these problems, the UN established SDG 6 in an effort to make adequate sanitation and water services available to all people by the year 2030. As many as 800 million people, or more, would require the construction of facilities to provide consistent clean water and waste removal. To succeed in their vision, the UN developed a series of targets. These targets include restoring and protecting river ecosystems throughout the world, eliminating sources of water pollution , and increasing international cooperation to bring services throughout the world.

In an effort to reach the targets outlined by SDG 6, some water companies have installed smart meters in places where water scarcity is a concern. These meters track and charge for every drop of water used in a household, which has led to higher water conservation in countries like The Gambia and Tanzania. The CEO of one such company, eWATERpay, claims that these meters have reduced water waste by 99 percent.

Such efforts take time and require many countries to work together. While some strides have been made, based on information from a 2017 UN study, not enough has been done to ensure that this goal will be met by 2030. Managing these targets properly is the only way to make certain all people will benefit from clean water and effective sanitation in the years ahead.

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Goal 6: Ensure access to water and sanitation for all

Access to safe water, sanitation and hygiene is the most basic human need for health and well-being. Billions of people will lack access to these basic services in 2030 unless progress quadruples. Demand for water is rising owing to rapid population growth, urbanization and increasing water needs from agriculture, industry, and energy sectors.

The demand for water has outpaced population growth, and half the world’s population is already experiencing severe water scarcity at least one month a year. Water scarcity is projected to increase with the rise of global temperatures as a result of climate change.

Investments in infrastructure and sanitation facilities; protection and restoration of water- related ecosystems; and hygiene education are among the steps necessary to ensure universal access to safe and affordable drinking water for all by 2030, and improving water-use efficiency is one key to reducing water stress.

There has been positive progress. Between 2015 and 2022, the proportion of the world’s population with access to safely managed drinking water increased from 69 per cent to 73 per cent.

Access to water, sanitation and hygiene is a human right. To get back on track, key strategies include increasing sector-wide investment and capacity-building, promoting innovation and evidence-based action, enhancing cross-sectoral coordination and cooperation among all stakeholders, and adopting a more integrated and holistic approach to water management.

Water is essential not only to health, but also to poverty reduction, food security, peace and human rights, ecosystems and education.

Nevertheless, countries face growing challenges linked to water scarcity, water pollution, degraded water-related ecosystems and cooperation over transboundary water basins.

What are the challenges?

In 2022, 2.2 billion people still lacked safely managed drinking water, including 703 million without a basic water service; 3.5 billion people lacked safely managed sanitation, including 1.5 billion without basic sanitation services; and 2 billion lacked a basic handwashing facility, including 653 million with no handwashing facility at all.

By managing our water sustainably, we are also able to better manage our production of food and energy and contribute to decent work and economic growth. Moreover, we can preserve our water ecosystems, their biodiversity, and take action on climate change.

Are water and climate change linked?

Water availability is becoming less predictable in many places. In some regions, droughts are exacerbating water scarcity and thereby negatively impacting people’s health and productivity and threatening sustainable development and biodiversity worldwide.

Ensuring that everyone has access to sustainable water and sanitation services is a critical climate change mitigation strategy for the years ahead.

Without better infrastructure and management, millions of people will continue to die every year from water-related diseases such as malaria and diarrhoea, and there will be further losses in biodiversity and ecosystem resilience, undermining prosperity and efforts towards a more sustainable

What can we do?

Civil society organizations should work to keep governments accountable, invest in water research and development, and promote the inclusion of women, youth and indigenous communities in water resources governance.

Generating awareness of these roles and turn- ing them into action will lead to win-win results and increased sustainability and integrity for both human and ecological systems.

You can also get involved in the World Water Day and World Toilet Day campaigns that aim to provide information and inspiration to take action on hygiene issues.

Facts and figures

Goal 6 targets.

• Despite great progress, billions of people still lack access to safe drinking water, sanitation and hygiene. Achieving universal coverage by 2030 will require a substantial increase in current global rates of progress: sixfold for drinking water, fivefold for sanitation and threefold for hygiene.
• Water use efficiency has risen by 9 per cent, but water stress and water scarcity remain a concern in many parts of the world. In 2020, 2.4 billion people lived in water-stressed countries. The challenges are compounded by conflicts and climate change.
• Key strategies to get Goal 6 back on track include increasing sector-wide investment and capacity-building, promoting innovation and evidence- based action, enhancing cross-sectoral coordination and cooperation among all stakeholders, and adopting a more integrated and holistic approach to water management.
• Only 0.5 per cent of water on Earth is useable and available freshwater – Wake up to the looming water crisis, report warns | World Meteorological Organization
• Limiting global warming to 1.5°C compared to 2°C would approximately halve the proportion of the world population expected to suffer water scarcity, although there is considerable variability between regions. Chapter 8: Water Cycle Changes (p. 1063)
• The global urban population facing water scarcity is projected to double from 930 million in 2016 to 1.7–2.4 billion people in 2050. Imminent risk of a global water crisis, warns the UN World Water Development Report 2023 | UNESCO
• Despite progress, 2.2 billion people still lacked safely managed drinking water services, 3.5 billion lacked safely managed sanitation services, and 2.0 billion lacked basic hygiene services in 2022
• Surface water bodies, such as lakes, rivers, and reservoirs, are undergoing rapid global changes, with one in five river basins showing high fluctuations in surface water levels in the past 5 years
• Water pollution poses a significant challenge to human health and the environment in many countries.

Source: The Sustainable Development Goals Report 2023

6.1 By 2030, achieve universal and equitable access to safe and affordable drinking water for all

6.2  By 2030, achieve access to adequate and equitable sanitation and hygiene for all and end open defecation, paying special attention to the needs of women and girls and those in vulnerable situations

6.3  By 2030, improve water quality by reducing pollution, eliminating dumping and minimizing release of hazardous chemicals and materials, halving the proportion of untreated wastewater and substantially increasing recycling and safe reuse globally

6.4  By 2030, substantially increase water-use efficiency across all sectors and ensure sustainable withdrawals and supply of freshwater to address water scarcity and substantially reduce the number of people suffering from water scarcity

6.5  By 2030, implement integrated water resources management at all levels, including through transboundary cooperation as appropriate

6.6  By 2020, protect and restore water-related ecosystems, including mountains, forests, wetlands, rivers, aquifers and lakes

6.A  By 2030, expand international cooperation and capacity-building support to developing countries in water- and sanitation-related activities and programmes, including water harvesting, desalination, water efficiency, wastewater treatment, recycling and reuse technologies

6.B  Support and strengthen the participation of local communities in improving water and sanitation management

World Water Assessment Programme

UNESCO Water

UNDP Water and Ocean Governance

UN Water for Life Decade

UN-HABITAT Water and Sanitation

A Post-2015 Global Goal for Water: Recommendations from UN-Water

Water and Sustainable Development Goals

Information briefs on water and sustainable development

UN-Water Decade Programme on Advocacy and Communication

UN Water and Sanitation Best Practices Platform

Water Action Decade

Fast Facts: Clean Water and Sanitation

Infographic: Clean Water and Sanitation

Water Action Decade, 2018-2028

40 per cent shortfall in freshwater resources by 2030 coupled with a rising world population has the world careening towards a global water crisis. Recognizing the growing challenge of water scarcity the UN General Assembly launched the Water Action Decade on 22 March 2018, to mobilize action that will help transform how we manage water.

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Water Unsustainability

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Jerald L. Schnoor; Water Unsustainability. Daedalus 2015; 144 (3): 48–58. doi: https://doi.org/10.1162/DAED_a_00341

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Water is a vital renewable resource that is increasingly stressed by multiple and competing demands from people, industry, and agriculture. When water becomes unavailable or unusable, life itself cannot be sustained. Changes in supply and demand for water are driven by population growth, climate change, and our energy and land use choices. Poverty frequently precludes the ability of many people to respond and adapt to water insecurity. In this essay, we discuss the effects of these drivers on the diminution of rivers, aquifers, glaciers, and the severe pollution that renders some water resources unusable. While technologies for water reuse, desalination, aquifer replenishment, and better water pricing are important solutions, the recognition of water as a profoundly threatened resource and as a basic human right is essential for providing sustainable water for future generations.

Water unsustainability is more easily understood than water sustainability : you know when you do not have it. When water is unavailable or when it is of unusably poor quality, life itself is unsustainable.

So how do we define water sustainability? Definitions usually involve the concept of long-term water availability for all uses. Supplying water to people for the duration of their lives is one definition, but is limited by a rather ethnocentric point of view. More broadly, we may define water sustainability as the continual supply of clean water for human uses and for the use of all other living organisms . This definition neither specifies exactly how much water is needed, nor does it require the unconstrained, infinite availability of water. Rather, it refers to a sufficient quantity of pure water for the foreseeable future for all biota, including humans.

Water is, after all, a renewable resource; sustaining its uses should be relatively easy. But in reality, we can have too much water or too little water at different times, and the water available may be of too poor quality. Water availability is often constrained by natural processes associated with the hydrologic cycle and geologic setting, or by jurisdictional boundaries of governmental authorities and water law. Water supply is also constrained by existing infrastructure to deliver available water. Our ability to ensure enough clean water for human uses is strongly influenced by the cost of water delivery and the price of and demand for water. Thus, many factors and trends affect the availability of water in space and time.

Because H 2 O does not cross the boundaries of our atmosphere, either to or from outer space, Earth has held the same quantity of water for eons. Earth's hydrologic cycle is driven by the sun, which evaporates water from oceans, lakes, and streams, and causes vegetation to transpire water. Thus, water is in a continuous flux from evaporation to precipitation, resulting in the recycling, purification, and redistribution of it. However, the quality of water and the fraction of H 2 O in each water phase (gaseous, liquid, solid) at a given location are subject to change.

Currently, more than 99 percent of all water on Earth is unavailable for human use because it is too saline (in the form of seawater) or is frozen as glaciers, ice, or snow. With a stored volume of about two million cubic miles, groundwater remains the largest component of freshwater available for humans. Lakes and streams represent the next largest stores at approximately thirty thousand cubic miles. 1 But the volume of freshwater stored in glaciers is diminishing as a warmer climate begins to melt continental glaciers and the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. Many changes in water quality and quantity are driven by human activities–not nature.

There are five “driving forces” of change that threaten water sustainability:

Population growth (and migration patterns to megacities). According to United Nations projections, the global population will expand from 7.1 billion to 9.2 billion by 2050, further diminishing the quantity of water available per person. Further, when millions of people migrate to megacities, it concentrates the demand and stresses local water supplies, again resulting in less water available per capita. Humans are also increasingly moving to coastal cities where seawater is too saline for drinking and desalinization is too expensive. As we pump freshwater aquifers more fervently to supply water for increasing population growth and urban development, salinity can intrude from the sea and despoil groundwater supplies.

Climate change (changing precipitation patterns and drought). Due to our shifting climate, dry areas are generally becoming dryer and wet areas are becoming wetter all around the world. 2 In arid areas, the relatively small amount of soil moisture evaporates quicker under hotter conditions, resulting in more frequent and profound droughts. Conversely, humid areas are becoming wetter with more intense precipitation events and floods: the warmer ocean evaporates more water, and a warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture, increasing clouds and bolstering global rainfall rates. Too little water and too much water are twin juggernauts of climate change that result in water unsustainability. 3

Land use change (increasing agriculture, irrigation, and urban sprawl). Food and water are intimately connected. To feed an expanding global population, we employ increasingly intensive agriculture on expanded acreages, requiring more chemical inputs and further diminishing water quality. Runoff from agricultural land delivers soil particles, fertilizers, and pesticides into streams. Fertilizer nutrients, in turn, over-enrich coastal waters, causing eutrophication, harmful algal blooms, and hypoxia (low dissolved oxygen), which impairs water quality for humans and aquatic ecosystems alike.

Urban sprawl–which causes greater imperviousness, heightens stormwater runoff, and prevents infiltration to recharge aquifers–is shrinking groundwater supplies. Groundwater supplies are also diminished by the burgeoning water withdrawals demanded by expanding populations and global agriculture. Irrigation is by far the largest water user in the world. Its impact on aquifers and rivers is particularly acute because withdrawals are a “consumptive” use of water: the water is mostly lost to evaporation. In cases in which water is not entirely evaporated, agricultural return flows allow some reuse options, such as recharging aquifers through percolation (spreading) ponds. But often the return flows are of such poor quality (laden with salt or toxic leachates) that they are useless for groundwater recharge.

Energy choices (power production, biofuels, and unconventional extraction of oil and gas). Our energy choices to satisfy the needs of growing populations and development are loaded with water repercussions. For example, electric power production withdraws more water worldwide than any other use except irrigation. Fortunately, the cooling water from electric power plants can be returned to the receiving stream with less evaporative losses than irrigation. But if the temperature of the returned water is too hot, or if it contains anticorrosion chemicals or chlorine disinfectant, it may cause deleterious effects on downstream ecosystems and fisheries.

The so-called energy-water nexus describes this tension between developing energy and water supplies. It is axiomatic that one cannot have water without large energy inputs, or energy without significant water impacts. Development of new fossil fuels (natural gas, oil, and coal) may impact the quality of nearby surface and groundwater. Some energy development options extract considerably more water than others. “Unconventional” oil includes oil shales, oil sands, coal-to-liquids, gas-to-liquids, and deep-drilled ocean oil. Conventional oil drilling and processing uses about 8–20 gal/ mmbtu (gallons of water per million btu of energy produced), while unconventional development of oil sands uses significantly more: 27–68 gal/ mmbtu according to Chesapeake Energy. 4 But the largest water user is irrigated corn used to produce ethanol biofuels, requiring more than 2500 gal/ mmbtu , or roughly two hundred gallons of “virtual” water required to produce every gallon of ethanol fuel burned! 5 That is in addition to the environmental impacts of fertilizers, eroded soil, and pesticides required for growing the feedstock.

“Unconventional” energy development affects water quality to a much greater extent than conventional drilling and processing. A blowout of a deep-ocean well, such as the bp Macondo Well at the Deep-water Horizon platform in 2010, causes an outright water-quality disaster. Approximately two hundred million gallons of crude oil spilled along the Gulf of Mexico coast directly into a sensitive fishery and a substantial tourism industry. Oil sands, another unconventional oil resource, require steam to liberate bitumen (a tar-like substance), resulting in discharge ponds of petroleum-contaminated water that both is harmful to wildlife and scars the landscape. Deep directional drilling and hydraulic fracturing for shale oil and gas deposits, which requires three to seven million gallons of water per well, are still other methods. 6 In hydraulic fracturing (popularly known as fracking), drillers inject a highly pressurized water, sand, and chemical solution into shale formations to fracture the rock and allow natural gas to flow more freely to the surface. The water solution, however, returns to the surface as flowback and produces water with extremely high salt concentrations and trace contaminants (toxic metals and radionuclides). Usually such flowback and produced waters are reinjected into deep wells, far below any aquifers used for water supply. Instead of deep-well injection, some oil and gas companies are trying to recycle this water for use in hydraulic fracturing at another well. But if it is left on the surface, the flowback and produced waters form ponds of exceedingly poor-quality water that are difficult to treat to an acceptable standard for discharge into receiving waters. Unfortunately, some unscrupulous gas companies abandon these ponds for others to clean-up or for nature to absorb.

Poverty (physical and economic water scarcity). Water scarcity afflicts poor people more gravely than those with resources to respond or adapt. Poor communities cannot migrate to a better location, pay to import safe drinking water, treat contaminated water to meet safe drinking standards, repair a dry well, or pump water across great distances. Volunteer foundations and nongovernmental organizations ( ngo s) recognize this dire need and seek collaborative solutions. Goal 7 of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals–“Ensuring Environmental Sustainability”–seeks to reduce the proportion of people without access to safe drinking water by half between 2000 and 2015. 7 Indeed, the achievement of the safe drinking-water goal is a major success story of the un program. Yet there remain eight hundred million people in the world who still do not have an adequate water supply; clearly much work remains. Nor has the related development goal of adequate sanitation facilities (toilets and conveyance of sewage) for the more than one billion people in need been met. The United Nations has adopted a post-2015 development agenda, with “Water and Sanitation for All” a stand-alone goal. Such a comprehensive global effort is absolutely essential for water sustainability.

All five drivers are highly interrelated. We cannot mitigate climate change without making the energy choices needed to transition out of the fossil fuel age. We must use land and energy wisely to help create jobs and raise people out of poverty. We cannot solve water problems related to urban sprawl without curbing population growth and migration to megacities. And we cannot ensure clean water for an expanding population without a global social agenda that builds strong communities and empowers them to meet future challenges.

Water unsustainability is becoming increasingly evident in impoverished countries, megacities, and large-scale arid regions. We see it in the water stress of the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia. We see it in the investment of billions of dollars for water reclamation plants in Singapore and desalination plants in Tianjin, China, and San Diego, California. Every day, newspaper headlines attest to human struggles of having too little or too much water. We see it when lakes become so polluted that they can no longer be used for drinking, and when coastal waters turn into dead zones devoid of fish. We see it when water is no longer available for irrigating immensely valuable food crops, and when major cities are frequently flooded by storms. We see evidence in mudslides and wildfires, in one-hundred-year floods and five-hundred-year droughts. Let us now examine a few poignant examples of water unsustainability that have become all too familiar: rivers that no longer flow to the sea, wells that run dry, the extinction of glaciers, the loss of critical ground-water supplies, and economic water scarcity throughout the world.

The Colorado River is born from snowmelt in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah. It twists through Nevada, Arizona, and California on its way to a final hurrah in Mexico, where it forms a twenty-four-mile borderline with the United States and travels seventy-five miles through Baja, Mexico, to discharge in the Gulf of California. The last remnant of freshwater flow is captured in Baja by the Morelos Dam, whose waters irrigate rich farmland in the Mexicali Valley.

But the Colorado River has experienced a steady decline in discharge volume over the past century; in most years since 1960, it has not even reached the Gulf of California. Dams, diversions, and irrigation have caused most of the water loss, including increasing withdrawals for an expanding population of forty million people living both inside and outside the Colorado River Basin. Millions of acres of expanded agriculture and the irrigation required to grow cash crops in the middle of the desert consume most of the incoming water.

Lake Mead is a main stem reservoir of the Colorado River near Las Vegas. It is the largest dammed water body in North America, though–as a victim of repeated droughts and rising withdrawals–it has not been full since 1983. It provides power for more than one million people and recreation for many more, but spreading the Colorado River over a large desert area has increased evaporative losses significantly. Since 2000, the surface of Lake Mead is down almost 130 feet, leaving a “bathtub ring” on the rocky catchment and divulging where water was once stored. Climate change has exacerbated evaporation from Lake Mead (and its upstream sister Lake Powell) and has decreased flow from the river upstream.

The Colorado River is not alone: the Indus River in Pakistan, the Yellow River in China, the Murray River in Australia, the Amu Darya River in Central Asia, and the Theertha River in India are just a few watersheds that terminate before reaching their destination. All are located in arid regions where temperatures and evaporation are increasing, and where excessive withdrawals of water for people and agriculture combine to promote water unsustainability.

Big Spring, Texas, doesn't spring anymore. The town lacks a big spring or even adequate surface water. Its wells have run dry and its residents face frequent drought and water shortages. In 2014, nearby towns Wichita Falls, Lubbock, and Amarillo, Texas, declared a stage five emergency for exceptional drought. It was the driest year on record–even drier than the Dust Bowl. Other towns in Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas on the Ogallala Aquifer in the Southern High Plains of the United States have recently experienced “game changing” drought and overwithdrawals. That they all lie on the largest aquifer in North America turns out to offer them no insurance against drought. Although torrential rains and flooding in May 2015 finally broke the Texan drought, the need for innovative technology and investment in new water infrastructure had become clear to everyone.

Big Spring responded by building a $14 million treatment plant to treat wastewater and recycle two million gallons directly to nearby towns for drinking water. By June of 2014, the Wichita Falls water treatment plant followed suit and became just the second facility in the United States to practice direct potable reuse ( dpr ): the treatment of wastewater for direct reuse in drinking-water treatment plants without an environmental buffer. Texans never thought they would drink treated domestic sewage, but direct potable reuse is an increasingly common solution for water-short areas.

California had a near-record drought in 2008. That one broke, but the state has routinely been short of precipitation since 2011. Now, in 2015, about half the state is in exceptional drought (the most severe category) and virtually all of the state is abnormally dry. Governor Jerry Brown put mandatory restrictions on urban areas to curb water use, but 80 percent of the water in California is used by agriculture. Farmers have volunteered to reduce their consumption by 25 percent in an effort to prevent steeper mandatory cuts later on. In many parts of California, groundwater is all that remains, but in areas like Kern County near Bakersfield, it has been pumped-down by more than fifty feet since 2011. Fortunately, water is a renewable resource and nature stores freshwater in many places: aquifers, lakes, soils, glaciers, and snowpack. But in California, all are in short supply. Snowpack levels in the Sierra Nevada are less than 25 percent of normal levels, and reservoirs contain only a fraction of their capacity.

More broadly, the California drought is emblematic of a global problem: wells are simultaneously being depleted in Pakistan, India, Sub-Saharan Africa, China, and the Mediterranean region. Wells run dry through the interplay of excessive withdrawals for population growth, climate change, agriculture, industry, and energy projects. The combination of these drivers with widespread poverty inevitably causes water scarcity. Impoverished communities suffering from water scarcity cannot recover or adapt; they lack the “resiliency” to respond to the disruption of their water supply. Water may be available in the new market at a higher price, but many simply cannot pay.

Land-based glaciers are melting worldwide. And tropical glaciers are melting the fastest. In mountain ranges near the equator, tropical glaciers are our canaries in the coal mine, early warning agents of climate change. While it is true that glaciers have been melting ever since the Little Ice Age (circa 1650 to 1730), the melt rate is much faster now and has only accelerated since 1980. We are witnessing the demise of low-elevation tropical glaciers within our lifetime; it is not simply a climate change story but an important water supply story for this generation and the next.

Lower-elevation tropical glaciers tend to be smaller than high-mountain glaciers, and they are more vulnerable to melting. Loss of these glaciers means collapse of the communities that depend on glacial melt for water supply and irrigation of crops. In the Andes Mountains of Colombia, Bolivia, Peru, and Ecuador, glaciers below 17,700 feet are melting at the fastest rate in three hundred years: a near 3 percent loss per year. Since the 1970s, the glaciers have lost an average of four-and-a-half feet of ice thickness per year from a total of about one hundred thirty feet. 8 In two or three decades, they will be history.

On the way to extinction, melting glaciers provide a lifetime of service to people below. When glaciers first begin melting, melt-water rivers are bolstered and flow-rates increase. But once enough ice has melted, the river reaches a peak flow and flow-rates begin to decline. The seasonal timing of the melt may also vary, providing little water in late summer and fall, stressing irrigation and drinking-water supplies. At lower elevations, snowmelt and precipitation also provide water for rivers, and researchers strive to unravel the precise contribution of glacial melt to total river discharge. “Glaciers provide about 15 percent of the La Paz water supply throughout the year, increasing to about 27 percent during the dry season,” Alvaro Soruco, an Andean researcher, has reported. A loss of 27 percent of stream discharge can be devastating to growing populations with increasing agricultural development.

In the Peruvian Andes, glaciers are melting so fast that this critical component of stream flow is vanishing. The Santa River flows northward along the base of the Andes, the Cordillera Blanca, and then turns west toward the seaport city of Chimbote. Precipitation in the Andes has changed little since 1970, but the coastal climate of Peru is about 0.7 degrees Fahrenheit warmer–enough of an increase to melt its glaciers. Santa River has already passed “peak discharge” from glacial melt, so future streamflow is expected to decline. Some river flow remains from local precipitation and groundwater inflow, but expanding withdrawals for irrigation projects in the coastal desert are claiming an ever-increasing share of this diminishing resource. During the arid month of July, only a trickle of water now makes its way down the Santa River to Chimbote, and a declining portion of that is glacial melt.

Lake Tai (Taihu) in Eastern China is the third largest lake in the nation. Near the mouth of the Yangtze River and the city of Wuxi, the lake has been celebrated for its beauty for centuries. Yet industrialization, agricultural expansion, and population growth have in recent years given Lake Tai the dubious distinction as having among the poorest lake-water quality in the world. In 2007, a harmful algal bloom of cyanobacteria (blue-green algae) choked the lake and threatened the water supply for over thirty million people. Since the 1990s, the Chinese government has taken a variety of drastic measures to combat the lake pollution, including closing dozens of industrial plants, flushing the lake with Yangtze River water, dredging contaminated sediments, and severely reducing the use of agricultural fertilizers in the basin. Authorities even controlled the price of bottled water when the price sky-rocketed due to exponential demand from a panicked public. But none of these interventions have been successful in restoring water quality, and Lake Tai remains a poster child of water unsustainability driven by the forces of population, expanding agriculture, and rampant industrialization.

By the time it flows from the Himalayas to the Bay of Bengal, the Ganges River in India serves approximately four hundred million people. But the Ganges is plagued by proliferate sewage pollution capable of contaminating whole river basins. According to the Indian government, of the eight hundred million gallons of sewage discharged daily along the Ganges River, only 20 percent receives any treatment whatsoever. 9 Yet every day two million people still bathe in the sacred river, posing a major risk for the spread of water-borne diseases. The Ganges is overloved and overused: she provides water for drinking and washing clothes, a receptacle for raw sewage and solid waste, and a final resting place for the ashes (and partial remains) of the thousands who are cremated on the Ganges annually in religious rituals. Clearly such practices render use of the river unsustainable, but huge investment in sewage treatment plants would be required to restore the sacred Ganges and protect the health of the Indian people who rely on it.

But it is not only underprivileged populations in developing countries who suffer from poor water quality. Rich countries have been polluting their water supplies with agricultural runoff from high-input agriculture and factory farms such as concentrated animal feeding operations. I was born and raised in Iowa, a prosperous state with the most productive agriculture in the world. Iowa rivers flow through immensely rich agricultural land, but farm runoff carries an insidious load of soil particles, fertilizers, and pesticides far in excess of what a healthy stream ecosystem requires. Further, nitrate from fertilizers moves easily from soil to stream via tile-line drainage systems. It is transported about eighteen hundred miles down the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico, creating a coastal “dead zone” of low dissolved oxygen. This Gulf Hypoxia is one of the largest of more than one hundred fifty such hypoxic zones around the world.

Increased agricultural activity to grow the feedstock to support a new biofuels industry also jeopardizes water sustainability in the United States. Biofuels are meant to provide energy security for developed countries and a high-value export for developing countries. But as an energy choice, biofuels are incredibly water intensive. Increased land and irrigation is required to grow the feedstock for biofuels (corn, canola, wheat, beets, and sugar cane for bioethanol; soybeans, sunflowers, and palm oil for biodiesel). In arid locations, large water withdrawals from aquifers are needed to irrigate crops, and more water is required at production facilities to produce the fuel. Fertilizers required to grow the feedstock crops lead to excessive nutrient runoff, which despoils water quality. At the same time, food prices may rise in response to the higher demand for corn, soybeans, wheat, and canola. In the United States at present, 40 percent of the corn crop (about thirty-six million acres of a total eighty-four million acres of corn crop) is dedicated to the production of ethanol biofuel. Cellulosic feedstock from perennial crops like switchgrass, miscanthus, and hybrid willow, or from crop and wood residues, hold promise for a greener future. Perennial crops do not require annual tillage and would reduce soil erosion; they would also use less fertilizers, pesticides, and irrigation water.

Physical water scarcity is defined as the lack of available water for humans and ecosystems, commonly occurring in arid areas, during droughts, and where water has been overallocated (causing unsustainable withdrawals). Economic water scarcity, on the other hand, is the lack of water infrastructure necessary to deliver water to people. It is typical of impoverished communities who cannot pay to access water from distant locations or whose water requires significant treatment for drinking. In individual families, it often falls to women and girls to find water wherever they can, including by traveling long distances to collect from wells or streams. Such sources may be contaminated, however, causing intestinal illness, especially in children.

Physical water scarcity presumes investment in infrastructure to overcome shortages during times of drought and in regions with progressively drier climates. Over-allocation of water resources is common in California, where agriculture preceded other forms of development and “prior appropriation rights” dictate that farmers now control the water. When surface allocations are consumed during droughts, groundwater becomes the sole water supply and is quickly overdrawn. But the frequency and intensity of the problem is made direr by irrigation and by interbasin transfers to growing cities that may have purchased appropriative rights. The largest such transfer in recent years is the massive “south-to-north” interbasin transfer of water from the Yangtze River in China to northern megacities like Beijing and Tianjin. When the project is fully completed, it will transfer 4 to 5 percent of the annual flow of the Yangtze, the largest river in China.

Interbasin transfers may be avoided through water conservation and reuse, by recycling industrial and municipal wastewater (sewage) and treating it to drinking-water quality, and by practicing indirect or direct potable reuse. Industry is also contributing to water conservation by designing new plants with “zero water footprints” and by capturing the precipitation that falls on their property (rainwater harvesting) for treatment and recycling. But all of these measures require “getting the prices right” such that the cost of water reflects its scarcity in a free market. With higher prices, private and public water companies will develop the infrastructure necessary to conserve and reuse water and/or desalinate seawater and brackish groundwater. The cost will also incentivize citizens to learn to conserve water resources, as Californians have tried to do.

One solution to water unsustainability is to recycle treated wastewater for nonpotable uses (such as using purple pipes for watering lawns and shrubs) or to practice water reuse by recycling highly treated wastewater for use as drinking water. Water reuse is actually widely practiced today, if inadvertently. By the time the Trinity River in Texas flows from Dallas–Fort Worth to Houston, every drop has passed through a wastewater treatment plant. Withdrawals from the river for drinking-water treatment and distribution use treated domestic sewage whether customers realize it or not. Because of vast improvements in wastewater treatment practices, the Trinity River is of surprisingly good quality and still supports many aquatic species. Thus, people already practice potable water reuse in one of three forms: 1) inadvertent potable reuse (as in Trinity River, Texas); 2) indirect potable reuse (as in Orange County, California); and 3) direct potable reuse (as in Big Spring and Wichita Falls, Texas).

Indirect potable reuse is the practice of reusing highly treated effluent from domestic or industrial wastewater and discharging it into a reservoir or aquifer (an environmental buffer) for storage. After a few months, the water is withdrawn and treated for drinking-water distribution. The environmental buffer tends to help users overcome the “yuck factor” that typically characterizes public opinion on drinking highly treated sewage (direct potable reuse). In indirect potable reuse, three factors are at play. First, the waters are mixed (diluted) with existing water in the reservoir or aquifer. Second, the treated wastewater is naturally filtered and purified in the reservoir or aquifer for some period of time. Finally, after the water is withdrawn it is treated once again to drinking-water standards prior to distribution.

There are only a few communities in the world that presently practice direct potable reuse of drinking water. The first use of direct potable reuse was in Windhoek, Namibia, in 1968, when 250,000 people began using highly treated wastewater for drinking. Windhoek has practiced direct potable reuse ever since with no reports of illness or long-term negative effects. Big Spring, Texas, is the first application of this process in the United States, and its success has led Wichita Falls, Texas, to follow suit.

One of the most urgent tasks for communities facing water unsustainability is to replenish their depleted aquifers. Sustainable groundwater levels offer a measure of resiliency for the future akin to water insurance. Full aquifers, reservoirs, and storage tanks all offer insurance in times of need, but aquifers are immense and–better than any other method of storage–can protect and hold more water with little loss to evaporation.

Aquifer storage and recovery ( asr ) and shallow aquifer recharge ( sar ) are two methods practiced today in Oregon, Washington, Nevada, California, Florida, and Texas. Shallow aquifer recharge refers to the percolation of water from a surface pond to replenish a shallow aquifer, though not necessarily for recovery and drinking-water reuse. Full aquifers are desirable themselves for the capacity to bolster streams and to restore wetlands and springs that may have drained.

California's Orange County Water District Groundwater Replenishment System ( gwrs ) is a leader in shallow aquifer recharge. It recycles and treats wastewater that would have otherwise been discharged to the Pacific Ocean. The wastewater is treated to very high purity and exceeds state and federal drinking-water requirements; but rather than be withdrawn for drinking, the treated wastewater is naturally filtered through sand and gravel percolation basins in Anaheim, California. There the replenished aquifer serves as the source of drinking water for 2.4 million people. The groundwater is subsequently pumped-up, treated again, and distributed to nineteen municipal water agencies.

Aquifer storage and recovery describes the process of using wells to pump water into confined aquifers under pressure below the water table (where the water pressure head equals the atmospheric pressure). These aquifers may often be brackish or slightly salty, and the fresh, highly treated wastewater forms a “bubble” on top of the aquifer that can be accessed during a drought or dry season as an emergency water supply. The South Florida Water Management District oversees the operation of dozens of injection wells with the capacity to recharge aquifers with water of various qualities, including treated and untreated groundwater, partially treated surface water, and reclaimed (highly treated) wastewater.

In this essay we have seen that driving forces of population growth, climate change, urban and agricultural sprawl, energy development, and global poverty jeopardize future water supplies and render our present practices unsustainable. Water unsustainability poses risk for this and future generations. We should adapt to these changing conditions and mitigate them wherever and whenever we can. Adaptation takes the form of preparing for climate change, creating and refurbishing our water infrastructure, reusing water, recharging aquifers, making wise energy choices, and utilizing hyper-efficient irrigation for crops to feed the world. Mitigation requires transitioning from the fossil fuel age and improving human prospects through acts of global cooperation, as in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals post-2015.

Many of the problems discussed herein will not be solved solely through new technologies. Economic and social issues are integrally linked to the problems of water sustainability. For example, we will not come to grips with economic water scarcity without the determined efforts of all stakeholders to eradicate poverty, improve education, and empower communities.

We are today experiencing a widespread crisis of water unsustainability throughout the world, with effects at the local, regional, and global scales. At the local scale, the drivers cause profound hurdles for individuals and families in gaining access to safe drinking water. At the regional scale, droughts and floods are increasingly frequent, inflicting human misery on a burgeoning population, while ecosystems suffer from poor water quality caused by our energy and agricultural practices. At the global scale, our efforts to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions have been stymied by competing economic and political interests. It is likely we will come to know the impacts of climate change through the effects delivered upon our most vulnerable and shifting water resources. Unless we can overcome or adapt to these driving forces, future generations will inherit a legacy of declining and degraded water resources. Our relationship with water and how we use it can evolve to meet this challenge, but it requires an understanding of the drivers of unsustainability and an acceptance of high-quality water as a human right.

Franklin W. Schwartz and Hubao Zhang, Fundamentals of Ground Water (Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley & Sons, 2003).

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• Published: 14 February 2020

Sustainable water solutions

Nature Sustainability volume  3 ,  page 73 ( 2020 ) Cite this article

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Engineering approaches to wastewater treatment must aim for more than improved efficiency.

Water is essential to any form of life on Earth — we need enough of it and of the right quality. This is so much at the core of sustainability that we have written about it in previous editorials ( Nat. Sustain . 1 , 151–152 (2018) and Nat. Sustain . 1 , 447 (2018)). Research has long documented the severe impacts that human activities have on both water availability and quality, including in Nature Sustainability more recently. We also know that significantly reducing those impacts is far from easy, especially against prospects of a growing population globally — our diets are based on water, a large portion of energy activities need water in various ways, most manufacturing and consumption activities require some form of water use and, all such activities ultimately produce some kind of wastewater. And it is precisely on wastewater — and how to treat it sustainably — that we want to focus our readers’ attention with this editorial. Given the different forms of water contamination, society needs to identify and implement different solutions. In this issue, we highlight three cases: treatment of wastewater from the oil industry in an Article by Park and colleagues, treatment of desalination brine in an Article by Prasher and collaborators and finally, treatment of water contaminated by glyphosate use in an Article by Halik and co-authors. Park and colleagues show how reusable surface-engineered sponges offer a sustainable solution to efficiently remove crude oil microdroplets from wastewater. Prasher and collaborators demonstrate a scalable surface-heating approach to improve solar evaporation in brine-disposal ponds, usually requiring large surface areas to passively evaporate water for the removal of brine — the solution significantly reduces the need of land to treat wastewater. Halik and co-authors present a method for the efficient remediation of the herbicide glyphosate from water by means of inexpensive, recyclable magnetite nanoparticles. All three studies have some common sustainability features. Of course, the three different solutions discussed have the potential to increase the efficiency of water treatment with respect to commonly used methods. But beyond the improved efficiency, each approach presents one or more additional advantages. Reusability, recyclability, scalability, low cost or reduced need of primary inputs (for example, land), are critical sustainability gains if we embrace an integrated view of what sustainable solutions must be. It is therefore the combination of improved efficiency with any of those gains that makes for socially desirable solutions to the water challenges of our time. We at Nature Sustainability call for more research focusing on such holistic solutions.

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Journal of Materials Chemistry A

Amorphous–crystalline cofeb/nips3 vertical heterostructure with built-in electric field for robust ampere-level water oxidation..

Highly efficient oxygen evolution reaction (OER) electrocatalysts play a paramount role in future hydrogen energy deployment. The quest for earth-abundant OER catalysts is actively pursued for the sustainable deployment of water electrolysis. In this work, an amorphous-crystalline CoFeB/NiPS3 heterostructure was successfully fabricated to realize highly active water electrolysis. The heterostructure delivered an overpotential as low as 285 mV at 50 mAcm−2 and an ultrasmall Tafel slope of 96 mV dec−1, with impressive stability for 24 h. This powder achieved an excellent ampere-level current density of over 1 A cm−2. Theoretically, density functional theory (DFT) calculations exhibited that CoFeB/NiPS3 has the smallest energy barrier for formation of *OOH species (0.91 eV). It is also revealed that the presence of an internal polarization field (IPF) accelerates the electron transfer from CoFeB to NiPS3. This research provides a new opportunity for the development of all transition metal-based amorphous-crystalline heterostructure electrocatalysts for large current density water splitting.

• This article is part of the themed collection: Journal of Materials Chemistry A HOT Papers

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S. Zhao, Y. Liu, Y. Chen, L. Li, W. Zhai, Z. Guo and Z. Dai, J. Mater. Chem. A , 2024, Accepted Manuscript , DOI: 10.1039/D4TA01168F

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