All data are provided in 30' latitude-longitude (i.e., 0.5° degree)
gridded format in the Geographic projection. A full description of the
data development is provided in the
Supplementary Information
available on the Nature website.
Protecting the world’s freshwater resources requires
diagnosing threats over a broad range of scales, from global to local.
Here we present the first worldwide synthesis to jointly consider human
and biodiversity perspectives on water security using a spatial
framework that quantifies multiple stressors and accounts for
downstream impacts. We find that nearly 80% of the world’s
population is exposed to high levels of threat to water security.
Massive investment in water technology enables rich nations to offset
high stressor levels without remedying their underlying causes, whereas
less wealthy nations remain vulnerable. A similar lack of precautionary
investment jeopardizes biodiversity, with habitats associated with 65%
of continental discharge classified as moderately to highly threatened.
The cumulative threat framework offers a tool for prioritizing policy
and management responses to this crisis, and underscores the necessity
of limiting threats at their source instead of through costly
remediation of symptoms in order to assure global water security for
both humans and freshwater biodiversity.
Related datasets from this study can be viewed in the
gallery at:
http://app.databasin.org/app/pages/galleryPage.jsp?id=a91e93e98b8a4affa9106b6410f7a309