Global Water Resources Report 2021: WMO - DTE - 01/12/22

Context:
Recently, WMO (World Meteorological Organization) has released its first annual State of Global Water Resources Report 2021.
Relevance:
GS3 - env poluution and degradation
About:
The aim of this annual report is to support monitoring and management of global freshwater resources in an era of growing demand and limited supplies.
The report focuses on three major areas:
Streamflow, the volume of water flowing through a river channel at any given time.
Terrestrial water storage (TWS) — all water on the land surface and in the sub-surface.
The cryosphere (frozen water).

Findings of the Report:-
-Between 2001 and 2018, UN-Water reported that a staggering 74% of all natural disasters were water-related.
-3.6 billion people have inadequate access to water at least one month per year and this is expected to increase to more than five billion by 2050.
-Large areas of the globe recorded drier-than-normal conditions in 2021, which was a year in which precipitation patterns were influenced by climate change and a La Niña event.
-The area with below-average streamflow was approximately two times larger than the above-average area, in comparison to the 30-year hydrological average.

Scenario of India:-
-There is more evidence of the worsening impact of global warming on the Indo-Gangetic Plain (IGP) that straddles eastern Pakistan, northern India, southern Nepal and the whole of Bangladesh.
-The Ganga-Brahmaputra and Indus basins that form the Plain, recorded more water flowing in the river channels due to glacial melt even as their total water storage declined in 2021.
-This will be extremely worrying news since the IGP supports nearly half a billion people across the four countries.