Global Water Crisis: 2.1 Billion Lack Safe Drinking Water

The global water crisis remains a severe, long-running humanitarian and economic emergency. The most widely cited current estimates show about 2.1 billion people still lack safely managed drinking water and 3.5 billion lack safely managed sanitation, while around 4 billion people experience severe water scarcity for at least one month each year. UN-Water also reports that water scarcity is increasing on every continent, with poorer communities most affected, and that roughly 720 million people lived in countries with high or critical water stress in 2021. Recent analysis continues to show the crisis is worsening in many regions because climate change, drought, groundwater depletion, glacier loss, and weak water infrastructure are reducing reliable supply. The Bank for International Settlements says water scarcity can lower real GDP growth and investment and raise inflation, while UN-Water cites annual drought costs exceeding $307 billion. A BC Center for Corporate Citizenship summary notes that nearly 40% of global land now experiences increasingly frequent and severe droughts, underscoring the growing exposure of food systems, energy production, and public health. Affected regions include arid and drought-prone areas of Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and North Africa, South Asia, parts of China, Central Asia, the Mediterranean, and drought-exposed regions of North and South America and Oceania. The crisis is global, but impacts are worst where demand is rising fastest and governance, infrastructure, and investment lag behind need.