Freshwater and Groundwater Depletion
Aquifers that took millennia to fill are being drained within a lifetime.
Severity score
61.2
Severe · default weighting
Trajectory
Worsening
What this is
Major food-producing regions in northern India, the North China Plain, the US High Plains and the Middle East are extracting groundwater far faster than recharge. Depletion produces land subsidence, saltwater intrusion and eventual irrevocable loss of storage capacity, threatening the food supply of billions.
Score breakdown
Each factor is a 0–100 relative severity index, not the raw figure or a specific time period. The actual counts and periods are listed under "Standardized Impact" on the right.
Loss of life
16Direct and attributable mortality, normalised across annual and cumulative tolls.
Lives negatively impacted
86People displaced, injured, food-insecure, exposed or otherwise materially harmed.
Financial cost
70Direct damage, lost output and health-system spend attributable to the event.
Environmental impact
86Emissions, habitat and biodiversity loss, contamination and irreversibility.
Trajectory
80Whether the situation is escalating, and how much worse it is plausibly getting.
Audit trail
Everything this entry has been through — when it was first searched for, queued, reviewed and approved, and how its figures and rank have moved since.
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