On International Day of Forests (21 March), we celebrate the many ways in which forests sustain and protect us. The following day is  World Water Day, where we explore global water challenges and solutions. Despite their proximity on the calendar, these two international days are only distant cousins in practice. Only a tiny fraction of national biodiversity plans consider the impact of forests on water supply, and only a fraction of national water plans place ecosystems at their centre. This is unfortunate, since nature can play a key role in securing water for the future.

Global water crisis, forest crisis

Our global rate of water consumption is unsustainable – we consume three times more per capita than we did a century ago, and demand will increase by more than 50 percent by 2030, to a level 40 percent above existing water supplies. At the same time, more than 40 percent of the world’s watersheds are facing moderate to high levels of degradation, and we are losing 18 million hectares of forests every year.

Crisis for cities and communities

The water crisis has profound impacts on cities; Cape Town is struggling to push ‘Day Zero’ into the future,  but it is not alone. Cities like São Paulo are not only facing risks of water crises in the future, but rather live with them on and off. Other cities like Bangalore, Beijing, Cairo, Jakarta, Moscow, Istanbul, Mexico City, London, Tokyo and Miami, home to more than 150 million people combined, are likely to face water crises by mid-century. This water crisis, which disproportionately affects rural and urban poor, as well as women and girls, profoundly compromises our ability to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, especially food security, energy and economic growth, and it can foster corruption, inequality and political instability.