Wednesday, March 22, 2023

'Vampiric' Water Overconsumption Leading to 'Imminent' Global Crisis, UN Warns

Water Overconsumption

Humanity's "lifeblood" -- water -- is increasingly at risk around the world due to "vampiric overconsumption and overdevelopment," the UN warned in a report, published hours ahead of a major summit on the issue was set to begin Wednesday.

The world is "blindly travelling a dangerous path" as "unsustainable water use, pollution and unchecked global warming are draining humanity's lifeblood," United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres said in a foreword to the report, released hours ahead of the first major UN meeting on water resources in nearly half a century.

Co-hosted by the governments of Tajikistan and the Netherlands, the UN Water Conference will gather some 6,500 participants, including a hundred ministers and a dozen heads of state and government Wednesday through Friday in New York.

Richard Connor, lead author of report, told AFP that the impact of the "world water crisis" will be a "matter of scenarios."

"If nothing is done, it will be a business-as-usual scenario -- it will keep on being between 40 percent and 50 percent of the population of the world that does not have access to sanitation and roughly 20-25 percent of the world will not have access to safe water supply."

With the global population increasing every day, "in absolute numbers, there'll be more and more people that don't have access to these services," he said.

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