Future global urban water scarcity and potential solutions

🤖 Plain-English Summary

Urbanization and climate change are together exacerbating water scarcity-where water demand exceeds availability-for the world's cities. The number of large cities exposed to water scarcity is projected to increase from 193 to 193-284, including 10-20 megacities.

🔑 Key Findings

• We quantify global urban water scarcity in 2016 and 2050 under four socioeconomic and climate change scenarios, and explored potential solutions.
• Here we show the global urban population facing water scarcity is projected to increase from 933 million (one third of global urban population) in 2016 to 1.693-2.373 billion people (one third to nearly half of global urban population) in 2050, with India projected to be most severely affected in terms of growth in water-scarce urban population (increase of 153-422 million people).
• The number of large cities exposed to water scarcity is projected to increase from 193 to 193-284, including 10-20 megacities.

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