GENEVA (AN) — The U.N. weather agency says 2023 was the driest year for global rivers in over three decades, signaling critical changes in water availability and a need for urgent action to protect freshwater resources.
The last five consecutive years recorded widespread below-normal conditions for river flows and a similar pattern for reservoir inflows, the World Meteorological Organization says in a new report out Monday.
“Water is the canary in the coalmine of climate change," says WMO's Secretary-General Celeste Saulo, an Argentine meteorologist. "We receive distress signals in the form of increasingly extreme rainfall, floods and droughts which wreak a heavy toll on lives, ecosystems and economies."
Last year was the hottest on record – with rising temperatures and dry conditions adding to prolonged droughts – and the second in a row in which glaciers around the world lost ice. In the past half-century, glaciers that feed rivers around the world lost the largest ice mass ever registered.
Widespread drought affected the Americas, including Argentina – which had a 3% loss in GDP and the lowest water levels ever seen in the Amazon and Lake Titicaca – along with Brazil, Uruguay and the United States.
Long-term water security at risk
Along with the dry spells, however, more flooding also was prevalent, as the world's "accelerated" hydrological cycle was affected by the transition from La Niña to El Niño in mid-2023 and human-induced climate change.
Africa was hard hit. Two dams in Libya collapsed from a major flood in Sept. 2023, killing 11,000 people and affecting 22% of the population. Floods also damaged Congo, Malawi, Mozambique and Rwanda.
The upshot is a threat to critical water supplies globally. "Melting ice and glaciers threaten long-term water security for many millions of people, and yet we are not taking the necessary urgent action," Saulo says.
About 4 billion people, representing nearly two-thirds of the global population, experience severe water scarcity during at least one month of the year, according to U.N. Water's figures on scarcity.
It says 72% of all freshwater taken from ground or surface water sources, either permanently or temporarily, are used by agriculture, 16% by cities and communities for households and services, and 12% by industries.
