Where water is taken from and what each country has to draw on, across 183 countries.
Source: FAO AQUASTAT, via the World Bank. The three sectoral shares sum to 100% of each country's total withdrawal. Agriculture dominates almost everywhere, which is why water policy is largely agricultural policy. Internal renewable resources count only water generated within a country's own territory from rainfall — river flow arriving from upstream neighbours is excluded, so countries dependent on transboundary rivers appear far drier here than their actual supply suggests. AQUASTAT figures are updated irregularly and many countries report once every few years.
Agriculture accounts for roughly 70% of global freshwater withdrawal, and above 85% in much of South Asia, the Middle East and North Africa.
This is the fact that reframes most water debates. Household consumption — the target of nearly every public conservation campaign — is a small fraction of the total almost everywhere. A country can halve domestic use and barely move its water balance.
The sectoral view makes the scale visible. Switching between agriculture, industry and households shows how completely the first dominates in water-stressed regions, and how the balance shifts toward industry in wealthy economies with efficient irrigation and large manufacturing bases.
It follows that meaningful water policy in most of the world is about irrigation efficiency, crop choice and agricultural pricing. Those are politically harder than asking people to take shorter showers, which is part of why the shorter showers get the campaigns.
Renewable internal resources count only water generated within a country’s own territory from rainfall. River flow arriving from upstream is excluded.
For most countries this is a reasonable approximation. For those dependent on transboundary rivers it is not, and they appear far drier here than their actual supply. Egypt’s internal resources are negligible; the Nile is not counted because it originates elsewhere. The same applies to Iraq with the Tigris and Euphrates, and to much of Central Asia.
That exclusion is deliberate rather than an oversight — internal resources measure what a country controls, which is precisely the point when upstream neighbours can reduce the flow. But it makes the map a measure of water sovereignty as much as water availability.
The hover panel gives the Falkenmark classification: below 1,700 cubic metres per person is water stress, below 1,000 chronic scarcity, below 500 absolute scarcity.
The three sectoral shares sum to 100%. They describe how a country divides its withdrawal, not how much it withdraws. A country taking very little water can still show 90% agricultural use.
Total withdrawal favours large countries. India, China and the United States dominate that view because they are large, not because they are profligate. Read it alongside the per-person resource figure.
AQUASTAT updates irregularly. Many countries report once every three to five years, so the year buttons show the most recent available rather than a continuous series. The hover panel labels the year where it differs from the one selected.
This is withdrawal, not consumption. Water withdrawn for cooling and returned to a river is counted the same as water evaporated in a field, though only the second is genuinely lost to the basin.
Related work:
Data from FAO AQUASTAT, via the World Bank.