This study assesses future clean-water scarcity for the 2050s by incorporating water pollution into traditional water quantity-based scarcity assessments. Using integrated models on >10,000 sub-basins, focusing on nitrogen pollution, the study finds that water pollution triples the number of water-scarce sub-basins globally by 2050, affecting an additional 40 million km² of basin area and 3 billion people. This highlights the urgent need to address water quality in future water management policies.

Mengru Wang, Benjamin Leon Bodirski, Rhodé Rijnveld, Felicitas Beier, Mirjam P. Bak, Masooma Batool, Bram Droppers, Alexander Popp, Michelle T. H. van Vliet, Maryna Strokal