Explainer: What exactly is freshwater and is there enough of it?

Oct 12, 2022

Only around 3% of water on Earth is freshwater, and the vast majority of that is hard to access - either hidden deep underground or ‘stored’ as ice. Image: Unsplash/ Matt Hardy

Stefan Ellerbeck

Senior Writer, Forum Agenda

Our Impact

The Big Picture

Explore and monitor how Water is affecting economies, industries and global issues

A hand holding a looking glass by a lake

Crowdsource Innovation

Get involved with our crowdsourced digital platform to deliver impact at scale

Stay up to date:

Water

Listen to the article

Contaminants such as salts are left behind and the freshwater vapour condenses to form clouds. Image: World Bank.

A graphic showing where the Earth's freshwater is.

Less than 3% of the water on Earth is freshwater. Image: USGS.

Discover

What is the Forum doing to address the global water challenge?

Have you read?

Don't miss any update on this topic

Create a free account and access your personalized content collection with our latest publications and analyses.

License and Republishing

World Economic Forum articles may be republished in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Public License, and in accordance with our Terms of Use.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.