On World Water Day, alarming data reveals global water demand could outstrip available resources by 40% by 2030, impacting billions.
The deepening global water crisis on World Water Day
By 2030, global water demand could exceed available resources by 40%: this is the unsettling statistic emerging on World Water Day, which the UN has set for 22 March.
Each year, approximately 4,000 cubic kilometres of water are extracted from aquifers, rivers, and lakes worldwide. 70%-72% of global freshwater is used in agriculture. 3.2 billion people already live in agricultural areas experiencing water scarcity, a pressing issue across many parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, including regions of Senegal and Ethiopia.
In Europe, 12.5 million people are exposed to PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) through contaminated drinking water.
The United Nations-promoted observance is set against a backdrop of climate crisis, pollution, inadequate infrastructure, energy transition, and the impact of digital technology. Underlying these, the conflict in the Middle East raises serious questions, not only from a political and humanitarian perspective, but also concerning the availability of water resources in the region.
Why a World Water Day?
The observance originated in 1992, within the framework of the UN Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro, to ensure an identifiable moment of global attention on the issue of water each year.
From 1993 onwards, 22 March has become the annual occasion when governments, international organisations, and civil society promote initiatives, campaigns, and reports to raise awareness about water resource management, access, and sustainability.
This year, the official message emphasises the link between water and inequality. The slogan, “Where water flows, equality grows”, aims to highlight that the water crisis affects everyone, but not equally.
Indeed, where safe water and sanitation are lacking, inequalities widen, and women and girls often bear the brunt, collecting water, managing caregiving, and remaining excluded from decision-making processes, a reality keenly felt in communities across South Africa and the wider continent.
The focus for 2026 is therefore exquisitely social: water as a common good, a human right, and a social as well as environmental infrastructure.
2.2 billion people worldwide lack safe access to an adequate supply of drinking water, while 3.5 billion still do not have functioning sanitation facilities in their homes.
Legambiente’s 2026 Water Atlas for World Water Day
On the occasion of World Water Day, Legambiente released the 2026 Water Atlas, the Italian edition of the Wasseratlas 2025, published with Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung Paris, France and Italy. The volume collects studies, scientific data, and analyses on water, climate, energy, agriculture, digital technology, rights, pollution, and governance.
The Atlas warns that the Earth’s water cycle has already exceeded sustainability limits. Global warming alters the entire hydrological cycle. For every additional degree Celsius, the air retains 7% more humidity, increasing the intensity of extreme precipitation but also the frequency of prolonged droughts.
If no action is taken, up to 5 billion people could face water scarcity conditions by 2050. Added to this is the growth in consumption. Over the last hundred years, global water consumption has increased sixfold, and demand could grow by another 20-30% by 2050.
But water is not only consumed from the tap. There is “virtual” water embedded in products. A single smartphone can require up to 12,000 litres; the textile industry uses 93 billion m³ annually; a cotton T-shirt requires an average of 2,700 litres. Material consumption thus becomes an invisible pressure on global water resources.
Pollution, inadequate purification, and PFAS make water less safe
The crisis is not just quantitative; it is also qualitative. According to Legambiente’s Atlas, in Europe, only about 37% of surface waters achieve a good or higher ecological status.
Pesticides, fertilisers, medicines, microplastics, and industrial discharges contaminate rivers, lakes, and aquifers. In 14.1% of European nitrate monitoring stations in groundwater, the limit of 50 mg/l is exceeded.
AI has a thirst for water
The increasingly scarce availability of water has increasingly serious energy effects. In 2021, global water withdrawals for electricity and fuel production reached approximately 370 billion m³ and could rise to 400 billion by 2030.
About 54 billion m³ were used solely for energy generation. Water consumption per megawatt-hour reaches 537,234 litres for biomass, 69,930 for hydropower, 3,190 for oil, 2,325 for coal, 446 for photovoltaics, and just 279 for wind.
But the energy system’s thirst is joined by that of digital technology. An average data centre in the United States uses over one million litres per day; for cooling alone, it can require up to 169 litres per second.
To train GPT-3, 700,000 litres of freshwater were evaporated. By 2027, global AI could consume up to six times Denmark’s water usage.
Fossil fuels also responsible for the water crisis
Coal
Coal continues to drain water resources and degrade their quality: a 500-megawatt coal-fired power plant with continuous cooling requires a water flow sufficient to fill an Olympic swimming pool every three minutes, while extraction lowers aquifers, dries up wells, and reduces availability for ecosystems and agriculture.
Over 80% of EU coal imports come from just four countries, and in Colombia, where approximately 84 million tonnes of coal per year were extracted between 2012 and 2022, diverted rivers and dams built for mining have exacerbated water scarcity in areas like La Guajira.
Oil
Oil also leaves a very heavy footprint: in Canada, it takes 2 to 4.5 units of water to obtain just one unit of synthetic crude oil, and the industry is authorised to withdraw 349 million m³ per year from the Athabasca River, a volume equivalent to the needs of a city of 2 million inhabitants.
Added to this are contaminated refinery discharges and damage from spills: in 2024, in the Kerch Strait, the leakage of approximately 9,000 tonnes of heavy fuel oil contaminated over 40 kilometres of coastline.
Gas
Not even gas escapes this logic: fracking, presented for years as a “cleaner” option, requires enormous volumes of water and can contaminate aquifers; according to the German Ministry of Environment, a single well with six drilling strings can require approximately 170,000 m³ of water.
Critical raw materials
But critical raw materials are also responsible for the water crisis. Demand for rare earth elements could more than double by 2040, while that for lithium could grow up to thirteenfold. Producing 1 kilogram of copper requires approximately 97 litres of water; for 1 kilogram of lithium, between 400 and 2,000 litres are needed. More than 50% of global copper and lithium production is located in areas already exposed to water stress and climate risks.
The emblematic case is Chile, where approximately 70% of the population depends on water from Andean glaciers and where mining activity accelerates the degradation of glacial bodies, contaminates springs and aquifers, and forces entire villages to depend on water tankers.
In the Salar de Atacama, copper and lithium extraction has already consumed over 65% of available water resources, while the Global Environmental Justice Atlas records almost 900 conflicts related to mining worldwide, with 85% connected to the use or contamination of surface or groundwater.
The picture worsens when looking at systemic effects: the OECD estimates that overall demand for raw materials could double by 2060, multiplying energy consumption, emissions, eutrophication, and damage to aquatic organisms.
What is being done on the eve of World Water Day?
Water crisis management has long been on international agendas, but with very uneven implementation levels. The United Nations has integrated the theme into Sustainable Development Goal 6 (SDG 6), which aims to ensure universal access to water and sanitation services. However, data indicates that the pace of progress is insufficient: billions of people remain without safe access, while demand continues to grow.
At the European level, in addition to the Water Framework Directive, the regulatory framework is being strengthened with the Water Resilience Strategy and the Nature Restoration Regulation, which introduces binding obligations on ecosystem recovery and the capacity of territories to retain and manage water. The estimated cost for implementing European water policies between 2022 and 2027 is €89 billion, but the cost of inaction is significantly higher, considering damage from drought, floods, and pollution.
From consumption reduction to reuse: water policies fail to keep pace
In the energy sector, the need is to reduce the water intensity of production, directing investments towards less water-dependent technologies. The issue of digital technologies’ consumption is powerfully entering the regulatory debate, with growing attention to the water footprint of data centres. In the mining sector, the expanding demand for lithium and copper is pushing towards more sustainable extraction models and the strengthening of the circular economy, also to reduce pressure on water resources in the most fragile territories.
Another front is that of reuse and efficiency. In several countries, the reuse of treated wastewater is already employed on a significant scale for agriculture and industry, while in other contexts, such as Italy, it remains marginal. At the same time, attention to nature-based solutions is growing, increasingly considered as infrastructures in their own right: wetlands, floodplains, and permeable soils are tools to reduce hydraulic risk and improve resource availability during periods of scarcity.
The crucial point, however, remains the speed, as well as the genuine intention, of governments to commit to defending and preserving water resources. Initiatives exist, but data shows that the evolution of the crisis is faster than the, increasingly weak, responses.
This World Water Day attempts to shine a light precisely on the regions of the world and the populations increasingly exposed to the consequences of an ever-worsening water crisis.
