A parched planet: the global water crisis

Then there is the issue of energy. In Romania, the Cernavoda nuclear power station is at risk of being shut down completely for the first time in over twenty years, because the Danube no longer provides a sufficient flow to cool the reactors. The situation has already brought production at Dacia and Ford Otosan to a halt until the end of August. The Paks power station in Hungary, which supplies almost half of the country’s energy needs, is also struggling with the same difficulties.

In the United States, July 2026 was the hottest month on record in the 132 years of data collected by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, surpassing even the 1936 record set during the prolonged Dust Bowl drought.

The most dramatic consequence is being felt on the Colorado River, on which some 40 million people across seven states depend. The river feeds the two largest reservoirs in the United States, Lake Mead and Lake Powell, which have reached 27 per cent and 22.7 per cent of their capacity respectively – an all-time low. The Colorado River is fed by snowmelt from the Rocky Mountains, but very little snow has fallen this year, reducing the river’s flow. The states involved remain deadlocked over how to share the cuts to their water supplies.

At a local level, the effects are becoming increasingly severe: in Kremmling, in Colorado, two reservoirs that meet the town’s entire water needs have fallen to levels described by the authorities as ‘devastating’.

Whilst in Europe and North America drought mainly results in economic and industrial losses, in the Horn of Africa (Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya, Djibouti and Eritrea) survival is at stake. In the region, the drought, which began in 2020, is now at the highest alert levels: 2025 saw the lowest rainfall ever recorded in several areas of Kenya and Ethiopia, with the October–December 2025 season among the driest on record in some areas, where less than 30 per cent of the average rainfall fell.

Estimates from the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) and Oxfam suggest that 20–26 million people will be in need of urgent food assistance across Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya by mid-2026. In Somalia, the number of people facing severe food insecurity has almost doubled in a year, reaching 6.5 million, with one in three people at risk of a food ‘crisis’ between February and March 2026. According to UNICEF, over 8.5 million people (half of whom are children) do not have sufficient access to water, the price of which has risen by up to 2000 per cent in some areas.

In Asia, the most immediate threat is not yet a record that has already been broken, but an impending weather event: experts are talking about a possible ‘Super El Niño’, which could even exceed the record-breaking event of 1997–98 in terms of intensity – an event that caused severe fires and a blanket of smoke over much of South-East Asia. The phenomenon is already developing in the Pacific, with sea surface temperatures forecast to be around 2°C above normal between July and September, and a peak expected between November and February. By disrupting normal global weather patterns, El Niño causes a drastic reduction in rainfall across South-East Asia.

Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam and Myanmar are vulnerable due to their reliance on agriculture, water resources, fisheries and hydroelectric power generation along the Mekong River basin. In Thailand, some farmers are already switching crops and introducing livestock that are more drought-resistant, but experts fear that the government’s information is not clear enough to persuade rural communities to prepare.

In Indonesia, forest fires are already burning across more than 107,000 hectares, whilst Vietnam risks losing its rice harvests and leaving its inhabitants without drinking water due to the reduced flow of the Mekong: in fact, in the river delta, without the strong inflow of fresh water, the sea tide is rising for kilometres up the canals.

The economic impact is expected to be severe: the event threatens regional rice and palm oil production, with estimates from Bloomberg Economics suggesting a possible rise of up to two percentage points in Indonesia and the Philippines. Globally, the UN World Food Programme estimates that El Niño could push up to 49 million people into acute hunger by the end of 2027, with a disproportionate impact on women and girls, who are often the first to have to deal with the consequences of the food crisis within their families.

From the Rhine to the Mekong, via the Colorado and the Horn of Africa, the geography of the 2026 drought tells the same story in different places: higher temperatures, scarcer and more unpredictable rainfall, and water and energy infrastructure designed for a climate that no longer exists. International organisations such as the International Energy Agency (IEA) and UN-affiliated bodies maintain that we already have most of the mature technologies needed for decarbonisation and resource management.

The real challenge, therefore, is not a technological one, but lies in geopolitical cooperation on shared resources, in structural investment in water efficiency, and in governance aimed at a faster energy transition – one capable of reducing both the emissions that fuel drought and the amount of water required to generate energy.