00:00The World Meteorological Organization has issued a stark warning about the world's water.
00:06It was 2025 was the driest year for years on global rivers in more than three decades,
00:12with 36% of the world's river basin area recording below normal flows.
00:18It was also the seventh consecutive year in which rivers with normal flows were in the minority.
00:24And the problem goes beyond rivers. The amount of fresh water held in groundwater, lakes, soil, snow and ice is
00:32declining.
00:33These stores act as a natural reservoir during dry periods, but that buffer is getting smaller.
00:40The world's glaciers are also shrinking. Between 2023 and 2025, they lost enough ice to fill 560 million Olympic-sized
00:49swimming pools.
00:50Well, Wayne Jenkinson is the Director of Hydrology and Cryosphere at the World Meteorological Organization
00:57and a key contributor in writing this report.
01:02Welcome to the programme. Good to have your company.
01:05The World Meteorological Organization saying 2025, one of the driest for the world's rivers in 35 years.
01:13Just how unusual and concerning is what you're seeing?
01:20Yes, thank you for having me. It is rather unusual.
01:24In the report, what we've done is compared conditions around the world with what we have seen in the past
01:3030 years.
01:31And as you said in your intro, we're seeing persistent patterns of abnormal conditions around the world.
01:40So in some cases, we see much drier conditions that are persisting.
01:44In other cases, we see much wetter conditions with persistent floods.
01:48So for certain regions in particular, it is quite concerning.
01:52The report highlights particularly low groundwater levels in Central and Eastern Europe.
02:00Why was that region so badly affected while parts of Northern Europe had above average levels?
02:08It's not the same picture across the continent, is it?
02:11No, it's not.
02:12And I think that's a message that really persists throughout the report,
02:15whether we speak about Europe or Asia, Africa, really, really everywhere you look.
02:21The conditions, I guess, in the European case are driven by different situations,
02:28whether it's precipitation pattern shifts or, in some cases, the declining snowpack that we're seeing in that region.
02:35But to give you an example of how it can vary across the continent,
02:39in the Horn of Africa, we had persistent droughts in 2025, which were quite catastrophic.
02:43But in the Congo River itself, we had three years of flooding.
02:48So this points to the fact that you can have quite regional impacts hydrologically
02:53or looking at water resources that can vary just, you know, in some cases, in very short distances.
03:00And what about the long-term consequences if these trends continue, or at least even for this year?
03:06I'm thinking about food production, energy supplies, national economies,
03:12potentially migration, I guess, or conflict when it comes to water supplies.
03:19I mean, it feels like that's the right question to be asking.
03:22If we look at the way this report is structured, what we're doing is comparing current conditions
03:26or recent conditions to what we've seen over the past number of decades,
03:30the past 30 years or, in some cases, more.
03:33You know, the infrastructure that we put in place often look to those periods in the past
03:39when we were building the infrastructure or our dams or water resource capabilities,
03:45even hydropower production.
03:46But we understand now that those conditions, which were normal then, are no longer normal now.
03:51And that has real consequences as we see and try to manage those changes,
03:55just for the reasons you've identified, whether it's food production or providing water for our cities,
04:01you know, providing energy.
04:03These are all changing quickly.
04:05And in some cases, the infrastructure that we have in place or even the populations that are changing
04:12are not prepared to deal with those changes.
04:14So it can result in the consequences you described, impacts in food production, impacts in energy availability,
04:21and can result in things, you know, like migration or at least require further investments in infrastructure
04:27to meet these pressures.
04:30Wayne, thank you.
04:31We have to leave it there.
04:32Wayne Jenkinson, the Director of Hydrology and Cryosphere at the World Meteorological Organization.
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