What each figure on the site counts, the indicator code it comes from, its unit, its source, and how many countries carry it. Figures are pulled as the most-recent non-empty value per country. The renewable-water series originate at FAO AQUASTAT; the access series at the WHO/UNICEF JMP; we redistribute them through the World Bank open data API and stamp the originating body.
| Measure | Code | Unit | Source | Countries | Definition |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Renewable freshwater per capita | ER.H2O.INTR.PC | m³/person | FAO AQUASTAT | 180 | Renewable internal freshwater resources — rainfall, internal rivers and aquifers generated inside the country — divided by population. Excludes inflow from upstream neighbours, so it understates availability for countries fed by external rivers while capturing their dependency risk. |
| Total actual renewable water per capita | FAO_AS_4190 | m³/person | FAO AQUASTAT | 184 | Total renewable water resources — internal generation PLUS net inflow from upstream countries (rivers and aquifers crossing the border) — divided by population. The fuller measure of how much water is physically available per person. Read it against the dependency ratio: water that arrives from abroad is water the country does not control. |
| Water dependency ratio | FAO_AS_4192 | % | FAO AQUASTAT | 183 | Share of a country's total renewable water resources that originates outside its borders. 0% means every drop is generated internally; near 100% means the country lives almost entirely on rivers and aquifers it does not control. The bridge between the internal figure and the total-actual figure, and the reason the total alone can mislead. |
| Water-stress ratio | ER.H2O.FWST.ZS | % | FAO AQUASTAT | 175 | SDG 6.4.2. Freshwater withdrawn as a share of available renewable resources. The demand-side signal: who draws down faster than nature refills. Can exceed 100% where withdrawals come from desalination or non-renewable (fossil) aquifers. |
| Renewable freshwater, total | ER.H2O.INTR.K3 | bn m³ | FAO AQUASTAT | 180 | Total renewable internal freshwater, billion cubic metres. A real fact, but mostly a measure of how large and wet a country is — the big, rainy countries top it. Says little about whether the people living there have enough. |
| Total actual renewable water | FAO_AS_4188 | bn m³ | FAO AQUASTAT | 184 | Total renewable water resources, billion cubic metres: internal generation plus net external inflow. Like the internal total it largely tracks national size, and it credits downstream countries for water that crosses in from upstream — so never read it without the dependency ratio beside it. |
| Agricultural share of water withdrawal | FAO_AS_4254 | % | FAO AQUASTAT | 175 | Agricultural water withdrawal as a share of total water withdrawal (FAO AQUASTAT) — irrigation, livestock and aquaculture. The single largest use of water almost everywhere, about 70% globally. The remaining share is industry (including power-station cooling) plus municipal supply; AQUASTAT's published total and agricultural figures support this share directly, while a reliable industry-versus-municipal breakdown awaits a source that doesn't contradict those totals. |
| Safely managed drinking water | SH.H2O.SMDW.ZS | % pop | WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme | 149 | Share of population using an improved drinking-water source that is accessible on premises, available when needed, and free from contamination. |
| Basic drinking water | SH.H2O.BASW.ZS | % pop | WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme | 209 | Share of population using an improved drinking-water source within a 30-minute round trip. A broader, lower bar than safely managed. |
| Safely managed sanitation | SH.STA.SMSS.ZS | % pop | WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme | 146 | Share of population using an improved sanitation facility, not shared, where excreta are safely disposed of in situ or treated off-site. |
| GDP per capita | NY.GDP.PCAP.CD | US$ | World Bank Open Data | 212 | Gross domestic product divided by midyear population, current US dollars. |
| Life expectancy at birth | SP.DYN.LE00.IN | yrs | World Bank Open Data | 212 | Years a newborn would live if current age-specific mortality patterns held. A summary outcome of health, wealth and clean water, included here as the axis water security ultimately bears on. |
| Band | Threshold | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Water stress | 1,700 m³/person | below 1,700 m³/person |
| Water scarcity | 1,000 m³/person | below 1,000 m³/person |
| Absolute scarcity | 500 m³/person | below 500 m³/person |
Sources: FAO AQUASTAT, WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme, and World Bank Open Data. Data refreshed 2026-06-17.
AQUASTAT's total actual renewable water and dependency ratio — the share of a country's water that originates abroad — are published, pulled from FAO AQUASTAT directly so the internal figure here can be read against the full picture. The total never appears without the dependency ratio beside it; see the methodology for why. The agricultural share of withdrawal is now live too — how much of each country's water goes to farming versus everything else — again from AQUASTAT, not the World Bank's frozen 1987–2002 copies. We show agriculture against all other uses rather than a full agriculture/industry/municipal split, because the distributed sector volumes don't reconcile with AQUASTAT's own totals; the industry-versus-municipal line waits for a source that does. And where no clean cross-national series exists at all — data-centre water use and groundwater depletion — we treat the subject the only honest way: as a sourced, caveated note rather than a spine metric. The data-centre estimate is modeled, with the key assumption left adjustable on the page; the aquifer story is told from NASA GRACE satellite measurements of the world's great basins, which track systems rather than countries. Both are kept deliberately off the figure/rank/source/year spine. We'd rather ship a measure right than fast.