Drought, floods and sickness: Key takeaways from UN's water report

Billions of people have been experiencing water-related issues on a daily basis - from contaminated drinking water, to droughts and floods - with a UN report warning that the risk of a global crisis is "imminent."

Here are some key takeaways from the UN Water forum, which published its report as the first major conference on the issue in nearly a half-century is set to get underway Wednesday in New York.

Severe water scarcity 

About 10 percent of the world's population lives in a country where water stress (the ratio of water use to water availability) is considered "high or critical," creating significant impacts on its availability for personal needs.

And according to a report issued Monday by the IPCC - a UN panel of climate experts - "roughly half of the world's population currently experience severe water scarcity for at least part of the year."

The World Bank estimates that climate change-exacerbated water shortages could cost some regions up to six percent of GDP by 2050 due to impacts on agriculture, health, income, and potentially forced migration or even conflict.

Cities vs agriculture usage

Agriculture makes up more than 70 percent of global water usage, but as city populations have continued to grow, "water allocation from agriculture to urban centers has become a common strategy to meet freshwater needs," the UN said.

But that's not likely to be enough. The number of urban residents threatened by water scarcity is expected to rise from 933 million in 2016 to between 1.7 and 2.4 billion in 2050, according to UN Water forum, which projects that India will experience the most severe effects.

Natural disasters 

As the planet warms, humidity in the atmosphere increases by about seven percent with each additional degree Celsius. That in turn leads to more rainfall, which is more intense and less regular.

Between 2000 and 2019, floods are estimated to have caused $650 billion in damage, affected 1.7 million people and caused more than 100,000 deaths, according to the report.

Warming also intensifies and raises the frequencies of droughts, which over the same period affected 1.4 million people and caused $130 billion in damage.

Sanitation and hygiene 

In 2020, over one in four people around the globe still lacked access to safe drinking water, while 3.6 billion (46 percent of the population) lacked access to safely managed sanitation services, including the nearly 500 million who must resort to "open defecation."

Twenty-nine percent of the world's population (2.3 billion people) lacked basic hygiene services, including 670 million without any hand washing facilities.

In 2019, 1.4 million deaths are estimated to have been caused by the lack of adequate sanitation and hygiene services.

Ecosystem damage 

Pollutants are also threatening freshwater ecosystems, which are particularly affected by agricultural runoff.

These fragile ecosystems are "among the most threatened in the world," the report says, while highlighting the disappearance of more than 85 percent of wetlands.

"The loss of environmental services and biodiversity is expected to continue as natural landscapes are lost to cultivated land," the report says, noting that these transitions can result in the emission of greenhouse gases.

READ MORE: Pollution causing 'more deaths globally than Covid'