As freshwater reserves dwindle, countries must prepare for new water realities

“This wasn’t one bad year, but rather a signal that lasted for a decade,” said Celeste Saulo, Secretary General of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), presenting the newest agency The State of Global Water Resources report.

The assessment shows that 2025 will be one of the driest years for river flows worldwide in 35 years, with discharges below normal in 36 percent of the world’s river basins.

This is also the seventh year in a row that historically “normal” river flows have been low, underscoring what the WMO describes as an increasingly erratic and unpredictable water cycle.

“Extreme water-related events continue to devastate communities and economies,” Saulo underlined.

Water ‘savings account’

Groundwater, glaciers, snow, soil moisture, lakes and other freshwater stored on land, act as buffers during dry and dry seasons. Ms. Saulo describes these slower reserves as the earth’s “savings account.”

Traditionally, he explains, they have absorbed bad years so that one dry season does not immediately become a water crisis.

“We’re spending those savings,” he said, noting that the earth’s water storage has been declining since around 2014-2016, while groundwater levels in many regions have been declining for several years.

Nearly two-thirds of monitored groundwater wells will be outside the normal range in 2025, with conditions increasingly shifting towards deficit, rather than recovery.

However there are, some positive signs. Parts of South America saw a partial recovery in water storage after years of severe deficits, while central and southern Africa maintained water levels well above normal in some large lakes.

Glacier melting

Every major glacier region on Earth lost ice for four consecutive years.

“All 19 glacier regions around the world are losing ice; in Central Asia, Iceland, the Russian Arctic, western Canada and the United States, this year was one of the three worst years on record,” said Wayne Jenkinson, WMO Director of Hydrology and Cryosphere.

In 2025 alone, glaciers lost around 408 gigatons of ice, while cumulative losses between 2023 and 2025 amount to around 1,400 gigatons – the equivalent of a third of the world’s fresh water taken in a year.

Some regions with smaller glaciers such as Central Europe, the Caucasus, western Canada and the United States may have already reached “peak water,” Jenkinson warned.

“After this point, the glacier produces less melt water each year simply because there is less ice left to melt. This is important for every downstream community that relies on water during hot, dry summershe said.

Narelle van der Wel, Head of WMO Monitoring, Prediction and Cryosphere Services, stressed that while further glacier loss is inevitable, the scale of the decline cannot be determined in advance.

“The disappearance of glaciers is inevitable, however the total disappearance of glaciers cannot yet be avoided,” he said, pointing to reducing emissions as critical to limiting future losses.

Moves the baseline

This report does not attribute any observed changes to climate change alone. WMO said pressure on water resources and natural variability also contributed.

Jenkinson said the government needed to prepare for a “baseline shift” as historical patterns became less reliable.

“The situation 30 years ago was not what it is today,” he said. Countries, he added, need to do this preparing “for the change that has truly come”.

Over the past five years, Asia and Africa accounted for at least half of the reported water-related extreme events and more than 80 percent of related deaths, but they remain the regions with the largest water observation gaps.

Water monitoring has improved significantly since the WMO began publishing the report five years ago, with 52 countries now providing data from more than 3,100 river flow stations, compared with just seven countries and 14 stations in the first edition.

However, the WMO said better monitoring, data sharing and early warning will be increasingly important as countries adapt to radically changing water conditions.

The recent China-Nepal disaster, described by the WMO as a “catastrophic combined crisis” involving the collapse of rocks and glaciers, shows how difficult it is to anticipate such dangers.

“Water knows no boundaries,” Saulo said. “This is why we need shared data, shared standards and shared early warning.”