Last updated: April 3, 2023
Stockholm Resilience Centre
Water in the Anthropocene
This impactful three-minute data visualisation effectively illustrates the substantial degree to which human activities are now affecting the global water cycle. The video, jointly produced by IGBP and Globaïa for the Global Water Systems Project, was first showcased at the Water in the Anthropocene conference held in Bonn in 2013.
In 2020, 26% of the global population (2 billion people) lacked access to safely managed drinking water, and 46% (3.6 billion) didn’t have access to safely managed sanitation. Natural wetland areas have experienced an 85% loss, and 75% of land surface has been significantly altered, impacting Earth’s ability to support sustainable water. Some countries may face a 6% GDP loss by 2050 due to water scarcity, potentially causing migration and conflict.
From 2000 to 2019, floods caused economic losses of $650 billion, affected 1.65 billion people, and resulted in over 100,000 deaths, while droughts impacted 1.43 billion people and had estimated losses of nearly $130 billion. By 2050, 2.4 billion urban dwellers could face water scarcity, accounting for up to half of the global urban population. Although 153 countries share 286 transboundary river and lake basins and 592 transboundary aquifer systems, only 58% of these basins have operational arrangements for water cooperation.
Stills from Water in the Anthropocene — Produced by IGBP and Globaia for the Global Water Systems Project, illustrating the substantial degree to which human activities are affecting the global water cycle
In 2020, 2 billion people -- 26% of the global population -- lacked access to safely managed drinking water, while simultaneously, roughly 70% of all freshwater withdrawals worldwide were used for agriculture, most of it for irrigation of crops that feed livestock.
Natural wetlands have experienced an 85% decline in extent since the beginning of the industrial era, destroying ecosystems that provided flood control, water purification, and carbon storage worth an estimated $47 trillion per year in ecosystem services.
Transboundary water politics is one of the most underappreciated geopolitical risks of the 21st century: 153 countries share 286 transboundary river and lake basins, yet only 58% of those basins have formal cooperative water agreements -- leaving the rest vulnerable to unilateral decisions with downstream consequences.
Some countries face a projected 6% loss in GDP by 2050 due to water scarcity alone -- a figure that does not account for the cascading social effects, including conflict, forced migration, and agricultural collapse, which could multiply that economic toll many times over.
The concept of 'green water' -- moisture held in soil and plants -- was only formally added to the Planetary Boundaries framework in 2022, yet it accounts for roughly 60% of all terrestrial precipitation and is the water that actually grows the world's food.