FreshWater Watch archive
Why fresh water is a limited resource, in sourced figures
This address: freshwaterwatch.thewaterhub.org once held a page of the FreshWater Watch programme, Earthwatch's citizen science project, on water as a precious resource. The programme now runs at freshwaterwatch.org. This page is The Water Hub's own, with every figure read again from the body that publishes it.
About 2.5% of the water on Earth is fresh, and more than two thirds of that is locked in ice caps and glaciers, with most of the rest underground (USGS). Lakes, swamps and rivers together hold roughly 0.3% of the fresh water. That thin slice supplies much of what farms, industry and homes draw on, and the pressure on it is uneven: in some regions people use almost all of their renewable supply in a dry year.
Where Earth's water is
The USGS breakdown, credited to Igor Shiklomanov's 1993 estimate in Peter Gleick's Water in Crisis, puts 96.54% of all water in the oceans and 2.5% as fresh. Of the fresh water, 68.7% sits in ice caps, glaciers and permanent snow and 30.1% is groundwater. Fresh lakes hold 0.26% of it, swamps 0.03% and rivers 0.006%, which adds up to about 0.3% (our sum of the USGS rows). USGS also gives a wider figure of "a little more than 1.2%" of fresh water at the surface, which counts ground ice and permafrost as well. Rivers and lakes hold about 93,100 cubic kilometres, roughly 1/150th of one percent of all the water on the planet.
| Store | Share of fresh water |
|---|---|
| Ice caps, glaciers, permanent snow | 68.7% |
| Groundwater | 30.1% |
| Fresh lakes | 0.26% |
| Swamps and marshes | 0.03% |
| Rivers | 0.006% |
Who uses it: farms, industry and homes
Across the world, 69% of the water people withdraw goes to agriculture, 12% to municipal supply and 19% to industry, according to the FAO's AQUASTAT database (FAO AQUASTAT). Averaged country by country the split is 59, 23 and 18 percent, because a few large irrigating countries weigh heavily in the world total. The range is wide: South Asia withdraws 91% for agriculture, 7% for towns and 2% for industry, while Western Europe withdraws 5%, 23% and 73%.
How many people go short
The WHO and UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme reported in August 2025 that 2.1 billion people, one in four, still lack safely managed drinking water, including 106 million who drink straight from untreated surface sources (WHO). Between 2000 and 2024, 2.2 billion people gained access. UNESCO's World Water Development Report 2024 found that, as of 2022, roughly half of the world's population faced severe water scarcity for at least part of the year, and a quarter lived with extremely high water stress, using over 80% of their renewable supply; droughts between 2002 and 2021 affected more than 1.4 billion people (UNESCO).
What a US home uses
The United States withdrew about 322 billion gallons a day in 2015, the latest national compilation: thermoelectric power took 41% of all withdrawals, irrigation 42% of fresh withdrawals and public supply 39.0 billion gallons a day (USGS Circular 1441). At home, each American uses an average of 82 gallons a day, and a typical family more than 300 gallons, about 70% of it indoors; household leaks waste around 180 gallons a week, nearly 9,400 gallons a year (EPA WaterSense).
Why the small figures you see quoted differ
Smaller shares are often quoted for the water people can use, and they count different things. EPA puts it as "less than 1 percent" of Earth's water being available for human use (EPA). The 0.3% above is the share of fresh water held in lakes, swamps and rivers, not the share of all water, and a figure such as 0.03% is the swamp row of the same table rather than all of the fresh water. When a share is quoted without saying what it is a share of, read it against the USGS table before relying on it.
Next: water testing services compared on The Water Hub.
Questions
What percentage of Earth's water is fresh?
About 2.5%, according to USGS, after Shiklomanov's 1993 estimate. The oceans hold 96.54%, and the rest is saline groundwater and saline lakes.
How much fresh water is actually available to use?
Very little of it. Most fresh water is ice or groundwater; lakes, swamps and rivers hold about 0.3% of it, and EPA describes less than 1 percent of all water as available for human use.
What uses the most water in the world?
Agriculture: 69% of world withdrawals, against 19% for industry and 12% for municipal supply, in the FAO's AQUASTAT figures.
How much water does an American use at home each day?
About 82 gallons per person, in EPA's figure drawn from the USGS 2015 water-use compilation; USGS itself gives 80 to 100 gallons per person for indoor use.
Sources
- USGS Water Science School: Where is Earth's water?, read 2026-10-21
- FAO AQUASTAT: water use, read 2026-10-21
- WHO and UNICEF JMP, August 2025, read 2026-10-21
- UNESCO, World Water Development Report 2024, read 2026-10-21
- USGS Circular 1441, water use in the United States in 2015, read 2026-10-21
- EPA WaterSense: statistics and facts, read 2026-10-21
- EPA WaterSense: how we use water, read 2026-10-21