Vatican newspaper warns of worldwide water crisis

March 23, 2026

The Vatican newspaper warned that “globally, a threshold of natural resource exploitation has now been crossed—one sufficient to trigger ‘a global water bankruptcy.’“

Citing a report published in January by United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH), staff journalist Valerio Palombaro wrote “over the last 50 years, 410 million hectares of natural wetlands have vanished—an area nearly equal to that of the entire European Union.”

“Approximately 70% of the world’s major aquifers are in structural decline,” Palombaro continued in his article, featured prominently on the front page of L’Osservatore Romano’s March 21 edition. “More than 30% of the global glacier mass has been lost across various regions.”

Palombaro added:

All of this triggers severe social and humanitarian repercussions: 2.2 billion people lack access to safe drinking water; 3.5 billion people live without adequate sanitation services; approximately 4 billion people face severe water scarcity for at least one month each year ...

Rather than serving as a tool for cooperation, water is increasingly becoming a source of contention. Since the very first days of the conflict in Iran, the specter of using water resources as a weapon of war has loomed over the Middle East—a threat that indeed materialized just days later with attacks on desalination plants in the Gulf nations.

 

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Further information:

• Bancarotta idrica (L'Osservatore Romano, 3/21/26)
• Global Water Bankruptcy: Living Beyond our Hydrological Means in the Post-Crisis Era (UNU-INWEH, 1/20/26)