Countries by Annual freshwater withdrawals, total (% of internal resources)

Ranking 2022

Values shown in %.

Analysis

This metric measures total annual freshwater withdrawals as a percentage of a country's internal renewable freshwater resources. According to the source: 'Annual freshwater withdrawals refer to total water withdrawals, not counting evaporation losses from storage basins. Withdrawals also include water from desalination plants in countries where they are a significant source. Withdrawals can exceed 100 percent of total renewable resources where extraction from nonrenewable aquifers or desalination plants is considerable or where there is significant' inflow from neighboring countries or other external sources. The unit is percent, and higher values indicate greater pressure on or drawdown beyond internal water resources. Data cover 177 countries, all with data from the last seven years, and 100% of datapoints are classified as official quality. The dataset carries 20 extreme outliers identified at the 3-sigma threshold, and values range from 0.02% to 7,750%, a spread of over 37 million percent.

The top of the ranking is dominated by arid-zone countries in the Middle East and North Africa and Central Asia. Egypt ranks 1st at 7,750%, Bahrain 2nd at 3,877.5%, Turkmenistan 3rd at 1,868.0%, and the United Arab Emirates 4th at 1,509.9%. Saudi Arabia ranks 5th at 974.2% and Libya 6th at 817.1%. All of these countries record withdrawals far exceeding 100%, which the metric explicitly allows when nonrenewable aquifer extraction or desalination accounts for a substantial share of supply, or when river inflows originate largely outside national borders. Pakistan ranks 10th at 326% and Uzbekistan 11th at 262.5%, both reflecting dependence on transboundary river systems for large-scale irrigation.

In the middle range, Hungary ranks 22nd at 78.2% and the Netherlands ranks 23rd at 74.9%, both notably high for European countries, reflecting significant industrial and agricultural water use relative to modest internal renewable resources. India ranks 35th at 44.8%, China ranks 59th at 20.2%, and the United States ranks 70th at 15.8%. Toward the lower end, Canada ranks 146th at 1.3%, Brazil 148th at 1.2%, and Norway 159th at 0.7%, all countries with large internal freshwater endowments relative to withdrawal volumes. The bottom five, all below 0.09%, are Gabon (171st, 0.08%), Equatorial Guinea (172nd, 0.08%), Congo, Dem. Rep. (173rd, 0.08%), Liberia (174th, 0.07%), Central African Republic (175th, 0.05%), Papua New Guinea (176th, 0.05%), and Congo, Rep. (177th, 0.02%), each possessing substantial river systems and comparatively low withdrawal demands.

Several limitations affect interpretation of this metric. Values above 100% do not indicate measurement error; they reflect legal withdrawals from nonrenewable aquifers, desalination output, or transboundary inflows not counted in internal renewable resources. Countries with large shares of imported river water, such as Egypt drawing on the Nile, will show extreme ratios that are not directly comparable to countries relying on domestic precipitation. Reporting periods vary across countries, and the World Bank's 2022 dataset may incorporate national estimates from different base years, which can affect cross-country comparability. The metric does not capture water use efficiency, per-capita consumption, or the share returned to the environment after use. The 20 extreme outliers flagged at the 3-sigma level signal that the distribution is heavily skewed and summary statistics should be interpreted with caution.

Methodology

Metric: Annual freshwater withdrawals, total (% of internal resources). Source: World Bank World Development Indicators, indicator code ER.H2O.FWTL.ZS, data year 2022. Definition (verbatim from source): 'Annual freshwater withdrawals refer to total water withdrawals, not counting evaporation losses from storage basins. Withdrawals also include water from desalination plants in countries where they are a significant source. Withdrawals can exceed 100 percent of total renewable resources where extraction from nonrenewable aquifers or desalination plants is considerable or where there is significant' inflow not captured in internal renewable resource calculations. Coverage: 177 countries, all (100%) with data from within the last seven years, and 100% of datapoints rated as official quality. 175 of 177 countries (98.9%) have data from the latest reference year. The dataset contains 20 extreme outliers at the 3-sigma threshold. Values range from 0.02% to 7,750%, representing a spread of over 37 million percent, indicating a heavily right-skewed distribution. Average year-over-year change is 2.6%, well within the 50% volatility threshold, suggesting reasonable temporal stability in reported values.

Sources

• World Bank