"Vampiric" humanity is depleting "drop after drop" the planet's water resources, the UN warned before the start Wednesday (March 22nd) of a conference to try to meet the needs of billions of people, in danger in the face of an "imminent" global water crisis.

"Vampiric overconsumption and overdevelopment, unsustainable exploitation of water resources, pollution and uncontrolled global warming are depleting, drop after drop, this source of life for humanity," said UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in the foreword to a report published a few hours before the UN Water Conference. unseen for nearly half a century. "Humanity has blindly embarked on a perilous path," he said. And "we all suffer the consequences".

Not enough water in places, too much in others where floods are multiplying, or contaminated water: if dramatic situations are legion in many places of the planet, the report of UN-Water and UNESCO published Tuesday highlights the "imminent risk of a global water crisis".

"How many people will be affected by this global water crisis is a matter of scenario," lead author Richard Connor told AFP. "If nothing is done, between 40 and 50 percent of the population will continue to lack access to sanitation services and about 20-25 percent to clean water," he said. And even if the percentages don't change, the world's population is growing and the number of people affected with it.

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To try to reverse the trend and hope to guarantee access for all to drinking water or toilets by 2030, objectives set in 2015, some 6,500 participants, including a hundred ministers and a dozen heads of state and government are meeting until Friday in New York, called to come with concrete commitments. But already, some observers are concerned about the scope of these commitments and the availability of funding to implement them.

Inequalities

However, "there is a lot to do and time is not on our side," said Gilbert Houngbo, president of UN-Water, a platform that coordinates the work of the United Nations, which has no dedicated agency on this subject. No conference of this magnitude had been held since 1977 on this vital but too long ignored issue.

In a world where over the past 40 years, the use of fresh water has increased by nearly 1% per year, the UN-Water report first highlights water shortages that "tend to become widespread", and worsen with the impact of warming, until soon hitting even the regions currently spared in East Asia or South America.

For example, about 10% of the world's population lives in a country where water stress is high or critical. And according to the report of the UN climate experts (IPCC) published Monday, "about half of the world's population" suffers from "severe" water shortages for at least part of the year.

A situation that also highlights inequalities. "Wherever you are, if you're rich enough, you'll get water," Connor said. "The poorer you are, the more vulnerable you are to these crises."

"Now or Never"

The problem is not only the lack of water, but the contamination of what may be available, due to the absence or deficiencies of sanitation systems. At least two billion people drink water contaminated with feces, exposing them to cholera, dysentery, typhoid and polio. Not to mention pollution by pharmaceuticals, chemicals, pesticides, microplastics or nanomaterials. Ensuring universal access to safe drinking water by 2030 would require at least a threefold increase in current investment levels, UN-Water estimates.

And this pollution also threatens nature. Freshwater ecosystems that provide invaluable services to humanity, including helping to combat global warming and its impacts, are "among the most threatened in the world," according to the report.

"We have broken the water cycle," Henk Ovink, special envoy for water from the Netherlands, co-organizers with Tajikistan of the conference, told AFP. "We need to act now because water insecurity undermines food security, health, energy security or urban development and social problems," he added. "This is now or never, the opportunity of a generation."

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