Resources & Scarcity

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.

A July 2025 study in Science Advances, analyzing over two decades of NASA GRACE/GRACE-FO satellite data (2002–2024), revealed unprecedented terrestrial water storage (TWS) loss across continents, with drying areas expanding at twice the size of California annually, forming four Northern Hemisphere mega-drying regions: northern Canada, northern Russia, southwestern North America and Central America, and a vast region from North Africa through Europe, the Middle East, Central Asia, to northern China and Southeast Asia. This drying accelerated around 2014–2015 during strong El Niño events, with land-based freshwater losses now exceeding contributions from ice sheets to global sea-level rise; groundwater depletion accounts for 68% of drying in non-glaciated areas. Since 2002, 75% of the global population in 101 countries has experienced freshwater losses, exacerbating risks to agriculture, sanitation, food security, and geopolitical stability. A October 2025 World Bank report confirmed accelerating drying trends across Asia, Eurasia, North Africa, and North America, warning of severe economic and job impacts while advocating demand management, supply augmentation, and better water allocation. In 2024, water disasters killed 8,700 people, displaced 40 million, and caused over $550 billion in damages, with 2025's 'Flash Flood Summer' in the U.S. highlighting erratic water cycles per WMO and Global Water Monitor. Overpumping groundwater, especially in regions like California, continues to amplify drying amid rising temperatures.

In Sub-Saharan Africa, approximately 600 million people—nearly half the region's population—lack access to electricity as of 2026, amid surging demand from digital economies, industrialization, and population growth that outpaces infrastructure development. Per capita electricity consumption has remained flat for decades, with frequent outages, load-shedding, and poor supply quality affecting even connected users, exacerbating economic constraints and exclusion from global electricity-driven growth. The region accounts for 83% of the global energy access deficit, with 18 of the 20 least electrified countries worldwide located there, where access rates can be below 10% in some nations.

The Gobi Desert, spanning northern China and southern Mongolia, continues to expand at approximately 3,600 km² per year, converting grassland and arable land into desert due to desertification driven by overgrazing, soil erosion, and drought. This expansion contributes to dust storms affecting Beijing and eastern cities, with Central Asia experiencing widespread land degradation. Recent data from 2025-2026 confirms ongoing annual losses of 3,600 km² of grassland and 2,000 km² of topsoil in China.