Launch of the Global Water Report 2025

Distinguished panelists, Excellencies, Members and partners, colleagues and friends.

Welcome to WMO headquarters, and welcome to all of you joining us online. Thank you for being here for the launch of the flagship State of Global Water Resources 2025 report.The first report, launched five years ago, used data from seven countries and fourteen river stations. This year, it draws on sixty-eight countries and more than three thousand stations. That growth did not happen here in Geneva. It happened in national services and countries around the world. And I thank you all. 

The report contains more facts and figures and graphs than ever before as we expand its scope and its relevance for decision-makers.

But today, I don’t just want to talk about statistics.  

I want to tell you the story of the water cycle.  

Water moves through the Earth system in a continuous loop. Precipitation falls, some goes into rivers, some into the soil, some recharges groundwater, some accumulates as snow and ice. Eventually, through evaporation, it returns to the atmosphere to fall again.

Some parts of this cycle such as precipitation, river flow, soil moisture are fast. They respond to weather within hours, days, weeks.  

Others, like groundwater and glaciers, are slow. They accumulate or decline over seasons to decades or longer.

Traditionally these slow reserves have acted as the planet's savings account: a buffer that absorbs bad years so that a single drought or a single dry season does not translate directly into a water crisis.  

One of the central stories of the 2025 report is what is happening to that savings account.

And the simple answer is that we are depleting it. We are spending our reserves.

Global terrestrial water storage has shown a declining trend since 2014–2016. This is not a single bad year, but it is a persistent, decade-long signal.  

For the fourth consecutive year in 2025, every major glaciated region on Earth lost ice mass. Several regions with smaller glaciers, including the Caucasus, Western Canada, and Central Europe, show signs of having passed "peak water." This is the point at which a glacier can no longer contribute more meltwater in a hot year because it has run out of ice to give.  

Groundwater levels in many parts of the world are in multi-year decline.

Last year was one of the driest years for river discharge in 35 years. The past seven years have seen abnormal river flows.  

Water managers and decision-makers do their planning based on long-term “normal.” So how do we plan for the abnormal?

This matters enormously for the message we send: effective adaptation depends not only on understanding changing climatic conditions, but also on better water management, resilient infrastructure and reduced vulnerability

This report shows that water-related extreme events continue to devastate communities and economies underscoring the importance of the Early Warnings for All Initiative in helping countries anticipate hazards and reduce their impacts  

Over the past five years, Asia and Africa have accounted for at least half of all reported hydrological extreme events and more than 80% of associated deaths. And precisely these regions often lack the observations necessary for forecasts and early warnings.  

And the strengthening El Niño will increase the extremes – drought in some countries and floods in others.

But it is not all bad news.

Some regions showed improvement in 2025.  

Parts of South America saw a partial recovery in water storage during 2025 after a severe multi-year deficit.

Central and Southern Africa maintained much-above-normal water levels across several major lakes.  

There are other examples in the report and you will hear about them from my colleagues.

At the World Meteorological Organization, we always say that weather respects no borders. And this is especially true of water.  

A river basin is fed by water from upstream, often in another country.

A glacier's retreat in one country reshapes water availability for populations hundreds of kilometers away. And a glacier disaster in one country can lead to devastation in another – as we saw with the recent tragedy in China and Nepal.

This is why we need shared data, shared standards, and shared early warnings — the exact function WMO exists to perform.  

Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen

This report combines ground-based measurement with satellite observation and global hydrological models into a  worldwide assessment- No single country or network could produce this alone.

But, as we all know, ground-based measurement remains uneven - denser in some regions, sparse in others. Satellite and modelled estimates, however sophisticated, are not a full substitute. This is why we keep stressing the need for continued and expanded investment in observation networks - through mechanisms like the Systematic Observations Financing Facility and WMO's hydrological monitoring systems.

Observations must be shared -  across every WMO Member under a common framework - transformed into a service that benefits  farmers,  city planners, or disaster-response coordinators .  

The State of Global Water Resources report calls for a sense of urgency, not panic. The buffers that have historically protected water security — snow, ice, groundwater — are eroding in many regions on a timescale of years, not overnight.

We have a genuine window for action: expanding early warning coverage; investing in the hydrological monitoring infrastructure; and opting for water management policies to address both water supply and use/overuse.  

My concluding message is that this report exists because Members share their data and their science. This level of understanding — global, standardized, comparable year to year — did not exist a decade ago. It is the product of sustained international cooperation under WMO's mandate. And my last call is for all of you to continue to invest in it.

I thank you.