GENEVA (Realist English). On September 17, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) published its annual report “State of Global Water Resources,” indicating that the global water cycle is becoming increasingly anomalous and unpredictable, and that water security faces long-term risks.
Rivers Experienced the Driest Year in 35 Years
According to the report, in 2025 about 36% of the area of global river basins had below-normal discharge. For the past seven consecutive years, only 34–38% of river basins were in “normal” condition — significantly below the average of 46% for the period 1991–2020.
WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo said at the presentation of the report: “This is not a bad year, it is a signal lasting a decade.” She noted that 2025 was one of the driest years for global rivers in 35 years, and the share of basins with “normal” discharge remains a minority for the seventh year in a row.
The “Savings Account” Is Being Depleted
The key alarm of the report concerns the continuing reduction of “slow reserves” — groundwater, glaciers and seasonal snow cover. Saulo compared these reserves to the planet’s “savings account”: traditionally they absorb the shocks of dry years, preventing an individual drought from directly turning into a water crisis.
“We are depleting this savings account,” Saulo warned. “Global land water storage has been declining approximately since 2014–2016, and this has been going on for ten years.”
According to the report, nearly two-thirds of observed groundwater wells in 2025 deviated from the historical norm. WMO Director of Hydrology and Cryosphere Wayne Jenkinson noted that governments need to prepare for a “moving baseline”: “What was 30 years ago is not what it is today.”
Glaciers Melting for the Fourth Consecutive Year
The trend of glacier retreat is also alarming. According to the report, 2025 was the fourth consecutive year in which melting was observed in all regions. In 2023–2025, global glaciers collectively lost about 1.4 trillion tons of water — approximately the amount held by about 560 million Olympic swimming pools, or about a third of annual global freshwater withdrawal.
In 2025 alone, glaciers lost about 408 billion tons of ice. Central Asia, Iceland, the Russian Arctic, western Canada and the United States were among the regions with the most serious glacier mass loss in the entire history of observations.
Asia and Africa Suffer Most
The report notes that Asia and Africa are the regions most affected by hydrometeorological disasters. Over the past five years, the two continents accounted for at least half of all water-related extreme events and more than 80% of recorded fatalities.
At the same time, it is precisely in these regions that the largest gaps in hydrological observations remain.
Saulo emphasized the need for transboundary cooperation: “Weather knows no borders, and water even less so. A glacier disaster in one country can lead to a catastrophe in another, as shown by the recent tragedies in China and Nepal.”
“Water Bankruptcy”: A Harsher Characterization
The publication of this report builds on a harsher assessment of the global water crisis given by the UN earlier. In January 2026, the Institute for Water, Environment and Health at the United Nations University published a report, introducing for the first time the concept of an era of “water bankruptcy.”
In the report, “water bankruptcy” is defined by two key elements: first, “insolvency” — the rates of human water withdrawal and pollution consistently exceed the threshold of natural replenishment; second, “irreversibility of destruction” — key hydrological systems such as wetlands, lakes, underground aquifers and glaciers suffer irreversible damage and cannot recover to their historical level.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres in July at a high-level political forum further warned: “We are living beyond our hydrological means.
Under the impact of excessive consumption, pollution and climate change, our world is using fresh water faster than it is replenished, causing permanent and irreversible damage to many river basins, lakes, aquifers and freshwater ecosystems.”
