World Water Day observed annually on 22 March since 1993, is a United Nations event that emphasizes the value of freshwater and promotes the sustainable management of these vital resources.

It focuses on implementing measures to address the worldwide water crisis, in alignment with the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG): ensuring water and sanitation for everyone by 2030.

The Theme Of The Year

The theme of World Water Day 2025 is ‘Glacier Preservation’ to highlight the critical role of glaciers in sustaining life and the water cycle. Glaciers, mountain run-off, and snowmelt provide nearly two billion people with water for drinking, agriculture, and energy production.

Glaciers serve as natural freshwater reservoirs, releasing meltwater that supports drinking water supplies, agriculture, industry, and healthy ecosystems. UNESCO and the World Meteorological Organization are the UN lead agencies for the celebration.

Preserving Glaciers Is Essential For Our Lives

Glaciers play a vital role in life – their meltwater is crucial for potable water, farming, industry, renewable energy generation, and thriving ecosystems.

Rapidly melting glaciers are causing uncertainty in water flows, significantly affecting both individuals and the environment. They offer vital advantages like climate control and safeguarding against natural threats. Global reductions in carbon emissions and local approaches to cope with diminishing glaciers are crucial.

Several of the planet’s key rivers—including the Ganges, Colorado, and Yangtze Rivers—depend on glacial meltwater to sustain their flow. In the absence of glaciers, numerous areas would face significant water scarcity, impacting drinking water availability as well as agriculture, industry, and entire ecosystems.

Melting glaciers contribute to rivers and lakes, which are crucial for drinking water, farming, and industrial use. To conserve freshwater through glacier protection, we need to decrease greenhouse gas emissions to mitigate glacial melting and adopt sustainable water management strategies.

Why Are Glaciers Melting?

Today, the main reason glaciers have begun to melt is because of human activity. The rising temperature of the Earth is the primary reason glaciers have started to melt more, and this climate change can be directly tied back to human activity. Things have gotten bad enough that glaciers are practically on the edge of extinction.

Carbon dioxide emissions are one big culprit. The mass amounts of CO2 and other greenhouse gases produced by human business, transportation, deforestation, and fossil fuel usage, rise into the air where they stop the heat from the sun from bouncing back out to space. As a result, temperatures rise, and glaciers melt.

Interestingly, human activity is not responsible for all the causes of glacier melt. In some areas, complex interactions between wind and ocean circulation patterns have helped to push naturally occurring warm water closer to the edge of the ice. This is still a phenomenon that scientists are studying.

Water-related Challenges

In 2022, 2.2 billion people still lack access to safely managed drinking water services. (WHO/UNICEF 2023) There are still around 2 billion people worldwide without access to safely managed drinking water services. Among them, 771 million people cannot access even basic drinking water services. (World Bank 2023)

2 billion people live in countries experiencing high water stress. (UN 2019) 80 percent of wastewater flows back into the ecosystem without being treated or reused. (UN Water, 2018) 55–60% of the global annual freshwater flow supply comes from mountains. 26-41% of mountain glacier mass is at risk by 2100.

According to UNICEF, India faces a severe water crisis, with nearly 600 million people experiencing high to extreme water stress, and the situation is projected to worsen, with water demand exceeding supply by 70% by 2025.

Moreover, two-thirds of India’s 718 districts are affected by extreme water depletion. It is estimated that waterborne diseases have an economic burden of approximately USD 600 million a year in India.

School attendance in India decreases when children are required to spend hours collecting water. A 22 percent increase in school dropout rates has been reported in drought-affected states.

Close to 54 percent of rural women – as well as some adolescent girls – spend an estimated 35 minutes getting water every day, equivalent to the loss of 27 days’ wages over a year. (Source: Analysis of the situation of children, adolescents, and Women in India 2016)

According to the International Water Management Institute, India is in the midst of a severe water crisis, driven by its reliance on a short and highly unpredictable monsoon, compounded by depleting water levels, extreme weather events, and mismanagement of resources. As the world’s largest user of groundwater, India accounts for around 25% of global groundwater extraction.

According to the Central Ground Water Board, 14% of the country’s 7,089 groundwater assessment units are classified as over-exploited, while another 4% are deemed critical. This unsustainable use of water has exacerbated an already fragile system.

In August 2019, the Prime Minister announced the Government of India’s commitment to provide a piped water supply to every household in the country by 2024 with a new national flagship program – the Jal Jeevan (Water for life) Mission.

Water Crisis In Future

According to the United Nations, today, about one in three people lack access to safe drinking water, and there are fears that by 2050, as many as 5.7 billion people could be living in areas where water is scarce for at least one month a year.

Furthermore, it is estimated that by 2040, global water demand could increase by more than 50 percent, putting additional stress on the vital resource.

Key Messages for World Water Day 2025

• Glaciers are melting faster than ever. As the planet gets hotter due to climate change, our frozen world is shrinking, making the water cycle more unpredictable and extreme.
• Glacial retreat threatens devastation. For billions of people, meltwater flows are changing, causing floods, droughts, landslides, and sea level rise, and damaging ecosystems.
• Glacier preservation is a survival strategy. We must work together to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and manage meltwater more sustainably for people and the planet.