Drought, water rationing and dry rivers: our water crisis is here
Disturbing news about our water resources is now constant and unrelenting. In just the past few weeks, media have reported that Puerto Rico is suffering a deep water crisis as severe drought has cut water supplies to thousands. The Rhine and Po rivers in Europe are at record low levels. The seven states sharing the Colorado River in the US are fighting over unprecedented shortages, while its major reservoirs have shrunk to their lowest levels since they were built.
Hungary’s only nuclear power plant is on the verge of shutting down because there isn’t enough water in the Danube River to cool it. Toxic chemicals have been found in all English water bodies.
Desalination plants in the Middle East have been bombed in the ongoing war with Iran and municipal water systems in the United States are being hacked.
The worst El Niño in recorded history is unfolding in the Pacific, affecting weather and water around the world. Violence over water is worsening, with more water-related conflicts than at any time in recorded history. And communities are mobilizing to block water-hungry datacenters, concerned that their water resources will be drained away.
At any given moment, there are always places around the world suffering from droughts or floods or experiencing water scarcity – a normal consequence of the natural variability of our climate and weather.
But what we’re experiencing now is not normal; it is the direct consequence of accelerating human-caused climate changes, on top of decades of neglect and underinvestment in our water institutions and infrastructure.
For years, climate scientists have warned that continued emissions of greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels and other human activities would alter the planet’s climate, raise temperatures, disrupt weather patterns and worsen extreme events, raise sea levels, and accelerate the spread of disease vectors. Those warnings were ignored, dismissed, downplayed. And now we are reaping what we’ve sown.
Yet our politicians continue to prevaricate, refusing to take actions to protect water resources; or worse, rolling back earlier efforts. The Trump administration’s EPA has halted efforts to regulate new water pollutants and weakened regulations put in place by previous administrations – both Democratic and Republican.
The administration has also continued to push for billions of dollars of cuts to other federal agencies that coordinate research on water resources and climate, including the National Science Foundation, the US Geological Survey, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
If governments continue to fail to address water and climate crises, the coming decades will inevitably see worsening water-related violence and conflict and deteriorating public and ecological health.
It doesn’t have to be this way. People care deeply about water. In poll after poll, concern for water resources – both quantity and quality – consistently ranks at the top, above all other environmental challenges.
And we know what needs to be done. No new technology needs to be invented to provide safe water and sanitation to the billions of people who still lack it. The cost of providing water to all and cleaning up the consequences of unregulated and uncontrolled water pollution is far less than the costs of failing to do so.
Violence over shared water resources can be lessened by international agreements and diplomacy over shared watersheds – which is the focus of a major Finnish water diplomacy initiative.
Smart investments in water efficiency technologies and regulations and in advanced wastewater treatment systems can improve the resilience of existing water infrastructure to extreme events.
Far more food can be grown with far less water with efficient irrigation systems, reducing pressures on overtapped aquifers and rivers.
And the rapid expansion of renewable energy systems and the rapid phase-out of fossil fuels will both slow the rate of climate change and reduce the amount of water required to produce the energy we all require – a win-win.
We also need more public education about both water threats and solutions by our schools and media, more bipartisan actions by our politicians, and more investment by governments, corporations and communities in the technologies and policies that we know work but are failing to pursue with the urgency the growing crises demand. Constant news about worsening water problems must not become the new normal.
Peter Gleick is author of The Three Ages of Water (2023) and When the Well is Dry: How Water Fuels Violence and Shapes Peace (2026)
Reporting from The Guardian contributed to this story.
