<div style="text-align: justify; "><b style="font-size: 1rem;">Humanity's "lifeblood" -- water -- is increasingly at risk around the world due to "vampiric overconsumption and overdevelopment," the UN warned in a report, published hours ahead of a major summit on the issue was set to begin Wednesday.</b><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The world is "blindly travelling a dangerous path" as "unsustainable water use, pollution and unchecked global warming are draining humanity's lifeblood," United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres said in a foreword to the report, released hours ahead of the first major UN meeting on water resources in nearly half a century.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Co-hosted by the governments of Tajikistan and the Netherlands, the UN Water Conference will gather some 6,500 participants, including a hundred ministers and a dozen heads of state and government Wednesday through Friday in New York.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Richard Connor, lead author of report, told AFP that the impact of the "world water crisis" will be a "matter of scenarios."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"If nothing is done, it will be a business-as-usual scenario -- it will keep on being between 40 percent and 50 percent of the population of the world that does not have access to sanitation and roughly 20-25 percent of the world will not have access to safe water supply."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">With the global population increasing every day, "in absolute numbers, there'll be more and more people that don't have access to these services," he said.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">At the UN conference, governments and actors in the public and private sectors are invited to present proposals for a so-called water action agenda to reverse that trend and help meet the development goal, set in 2015, of ensuring "access to water and sanitation for all by 2030."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The last conference at this high level on the issue, which lacks a global treaty or a dedicated UN agency, was held in 1977 in Mar del Plata, Argentina.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Some observers have already voiced concerns about the scope of these commitments and the availability of funding to implement them.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"There is much to do and time is not on our side," said Gilbert Houngbo, chair of UN-Water, a forum for coordinating work on the topic.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The report, published by UN-Water and UNESCO, warns that "scarcity is becoming endemic" due to overconsumption and pollution, while global warming will increase seasonal water shortages in both areas with abundant water as well as those already strained.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">- 'Now or never' -</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"About 10% of the world's population lives in a country where water stress has reached a high or critical level," the report says.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">According to the most recent UN climate report, published Monday by the IPCC expert panel, "roughly half of the world's population currently experience severe water scarcity for at least part of the year."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Those shortages have the most significant impact on the poor, Connor told AFP.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"No matter where you are, if you are rich enough, you will manage to get water," he said.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The report notes the particular impact of existing water supplies becoming contaminated due to underperforming or nonexistent sanitation systems.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"At least 2 billion people (globally) use a drinking water source contaminated with feces, putting them at risk of contracting cholera, dysentery, typhoid and polio," it said.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">That high number does not even take into account pollution from pharmaceuticals, chemicals, pesticides, microplastics and nanomaterials.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">To ensure access to safe drinking water for all by 2030, current levels of investment would have to be tripled, the report says.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Freshwater ecosystems -- which in addition to water, provide life-sustaining economic resources and help combat global warming -- "are among the most threatened in the world," the report warns.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"We have to act now because water insecurity is undermining food security, health security, energy security or urban development and societal issues," Henk Ovink, the Dutch special envoy for water, told AFP.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"It's now or never as we say -- a once in a generation opportunity." AFP</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify; ">bnbd24/kh</div>