Water

• [New] The U.S. alone will need to invest $4.5 trillion over the next 5 years for infrastructure upgrades to water, energy, public roads, transportation, exporters and more.
• [New] Nearly half the world's population, around 3.6 billion people, face water-scarcity for at least one month per year, and it is expected that over 5 billion people will suffer some water shortage by 2050.
• [New] By 2050 nearly half of the world population will live in water stressed regions, due to either arid conditions or lack of access to clean water.
• [New] Halt of new drilling permits on federal lands and waters puts 1.1 million b/d of oil output and 3.7 Bcf/d of gas output at risk by 2025 if existing permits and drilled-but-uncompleted wells are allowed to continue.
• [New] The global demand for fresh water will exceed supply by 40% in 2030, with some cities, like Cape Town, already suffering from water stress.
• [New] Fisheries Act 2020 is now part of UK Law and will enable UK to have more control over fisheries within British waters through a new foreign vessel licensing regime and ends the current automatic rights for EU vessels to fish in UK waters.
• [New] By 2050, more than half of the global population will live in areas that suffer water scarcity at least one month each year.
• [New] One in 33 people will need aid to meet basic needs like food, water and sanitation in 2021, an increase of 40% from in 2020.
• [New] Only about US$ 25.5 billion was committed in 2017 at the UN Ocean Conference, about one-sixth of what is required for achieving the Sustainable Development Goal 14, 'Life Below Water', by 2030.
• President-elect Joe Biden has said that one of his first steps upon taking office will be to pass an executive order to conserve 30% of U.S. lands and waters by 2030.
• U.S. crude production will fall by about 2.5-million barrels a day in 2021 as oil prices are still too low to earn attractive returns.
• By 2030, with a projected 8.5 billion people, global demand is expected to increase 35% for food, 40% for water and 50% for energy.
• Biden has committed to signing an executive order to conserve 30% of America's lands and waters by 2030 - a goal in line with the United Nations' plan for protecting biodiversity.
• The United Nations recognises the role of biodiversity in stabilising climate and has declared that the next decade will be the Decade on Ecosystem Restoration 2021-2030.
• Water consumption, mostly drawn from Lac Leman, has slowly decreased over the past 10 years, the report notes, and CERN commits to keeping the increase in water consumption below 5% to the end of 2024, despite a growing demand for cooling from upgraded facilities.
• Indus basin countries would need to ramp up investments to US$ 10 billion per year to mitigate water scarcity issues and ensure improved access to resources by 2050.
• ADB estimates the investment needs for water and sanitation to be on average $53 billion per year up to 2030, of which about one third will be needed from the private sector.
• Through both climate change effects and negative, man-made distortions of the water supply, multiple populations will suffer from inadequate water quantity and quality over the next 30 years.
• In 2015 the previous Alberta government announced a plan to eliminate coal-fired electricity by 2030, a goal Canada's federal government embraced three years later to help fulfill Canada's greenhouse-gas-reduction commitments to the Paris Agreement.
• The coming decades will bring changes to the Arctic region that will have a significant impact on the global economy, given its abundance of natural resources and strategic location.
• 100 cities that hold importance in national as well as global economies and are home to 350 million people are set to face the greatest rise in water risks by 2050 unless urgent action is taken to mitigate and adapt to climate change.
• U.S. crude production will fall by about 2.5 million barrels a day in 2021 as oil prices are still too low to earn attractive returns.
• A new protected area in Northern Quebec was announced in November 2020 as a next-step in Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's promise to the United Nations to safeguard 30% of Canada's land and water by 2030 and as part of the Canada Nature Fund's Target 1 Challenge.

Last updated: 10 January 2021