Original illustration — inspired by the collapse of the Langtang glacier, August 2026
One chapter per theme, with data and real-world cases at the centre. Scroll to move through them one by one — or jump straight to a theme from the menu on the right.
Enshrined by the UN General Assembly in July 2010 (Resolution 64/292): drinking water is “essential for the realisation of all human rights”. It must be sufficient, safe, acceptable, physically accessible and affordable.
Re-municipalisation of urban water services.
📍 see the pinAguas Andinas/Alto Maipo: the new constitution shelves privatisation.
📍 see the pinThe cautionary tale: privatisation, cholera, sewage discharges into rivers.
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The volume of fresh water used to produce a good: it is no longer physically present in the product, but it was there throughout the whole supply chain. It's the water we eat without knowing it — often someone else's.
85% of wheat from Russia and Ukraine: the war as a virtual-water crisis.
📍 see the pinIn 2014 discovers it is outsourcing its own water footprint.
📍 see the pinAsparagus irrigated by a vulnerable aquifer.
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Attori potenti — pubblici o privati — prendono il controllo di risorse idriche preziose, sottraendole a comunità locali. Tra il 2000 e il 2012: circa 203 milioni di ettari acquisiti o affittati, quanto l'Europa nord-occidentale.
The countries hit hardest by volumes taken per capita.
📍 see the pinThe countries most targeted by land grabbing.
📍 see the pinLand grabbing also reaches the “European countryside”.
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Water is the first sentinel of climate change. Beware of environmental determinism: it is not scarcity itself that causes trouble, but a society's social, economic and political capacity to adapt.
“Day Zero”: the extreme rationing of the urban water crisis.
📍 see the pinThe same water, different uses, growing tensions with the Po Valley.
📍 see the pin11 out of 12 countries rely on groundwater.
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The Pacific Institute distinguishes three categories: water as a trigger, as a weapon, as a casualty. But research by Aaron Wolf, who built the world's largest database of water disputes, tells a different story.
The textbook case of hydro-hegemony on the Blue Nile.
📍 see the pinSuspended in 2025 after surviving three wars since 1960.
📍 see the pinWater infrastructure as a target of war.
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On 22 March 2023, in New York, the first UN Water Conference in 49 years. Two messages still unresolved: the human right to water remains unfulfilled, and water is still not on the climate agenda.
UN Water Conference: “Cooperation and Partnership for Water”.
📍 see the pinThe last UN water conference before 2023.
📍 see the pin19 states, multi-level governance.
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Water-Energy-Food-Ecosystem Nexus: water, energy, food and ecosystems are deeply interdependent. Every management choice in one sector has effects on the other three.
Chinese dams versus downstream fisheries and sediment.
📍 see the pinDams, energy and food shared between states.
📍 see the pinDrinking water versus the lake's ecosystem balance.
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Virtual water, desalination, recycled water: three tools for decoupling a territory's water security from its physical availability of fresh water — with benefits, but also energy costs.
Zero surface resources: it desalinates and recycles everything.
📍 see the pinA dual water network, drinking water and treated wastewater.
📍 see the pinThe missing decoupling: no desalination network.
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A state can exert power over other riparian states to capture more benefits from a shared basin. But history shows that water cooperation far outweighs acute conflict.
Cooperation with shared infrastructure ownership.
📍 see the pinA model of multi-level cooperation.
📍 see the pinLibya, Algeria, Tunisia: joint management as a foundation for peace.
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Most of the water we depend on can't be seen: it's underground, in the ice, hidden in the food we eat (75% of withdrawals are agricultural). What's more, 99% of the planet's liquid fresh water is underground.
6.4 billion gallons in 2023, 95% for data centres.
📍 see the pin813 million gallons in 2023, 95% for data centres.
📍 see the pinWorld's tenth-largest exporter of water from vulnerable aquifers.
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Fresh water, salt water, water vapour, green water: future water policy will need to reckon with the entire water cycle — visible and invisible, liquid and solid (the Tibet / Nepal case) and in the form of water vapour! For every degree of warming, the atmosphere holds around 7% more vapour.
The hydro-climatic paradox.
📍 see the pinSnowfall down 34% since 1920.
📍 see the pinWater still off the climate agenda.
📍 see the pinAttenzione al determinismo ambientale: non è la scarsità in sé a causare le migrazioni, ma la capacità di una società di adattarsi. Casi in cui il nesso acqua-migrazione è documentato da letteratura accademica o fonti giornalistiche di primo piano.
2006-2010 drought and rural-urban migration.
📍 see the pin2023 Falepili Union Treaty: the first climate-migration pathway.
📍 see the pin1.7 million displaced, worst drought in 40 years.
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