Humanity Has 'broken The Water Cycle,' UN Chief Warns

The future of humanity's "lifeblood" -- water -- is under threat across the planet, the UN secretary-general warned Wednesday at the opening of the first major UN meeting on water resources in nearly half a century

United Nations, United States, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 22nd Mar, 2023 ) :The future of humanity's "lifeblood" -- water -- is under threat across the planet, the UN secretary-general warned Wednesday at the opening of the first major UN meeting on water resources in nearly half a century.

"We've broken the water cycle, destroyed ecosystems and contaminated groundwater," Antonio Guterres said at the three-day summit in New York, which gathers some 6,500 participants, including a dozen heads of state and government.

"We are draining humanity's lifeblood through vampiric overconsumption and unsustainable use, and evaporating it through global heating," Guterres told the conference.

A report by UN-Water and UNESCO released Tuesday warned of too little or too much water in some places and contaminated water in others -- conditions that it said highlight the imminent risk of a global water crisis.

"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," report lead author Richard Connor told AFP.

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.

At the UN conference, governments and actors in the public and private sectors are invited to present proposals to reverse that trend and help meet the development goal, set in 2015, of ensuring "access to water and sanitation for all by 2030."