water stress index

Syllable breakdown

Dictionary meaning

a quantitative measure of the degree of competition for available freshwater resources in a given basin, region, or country, typically calculated as the ratio of total annual freshwater withdrawals to total annual renewable freshwater supply, with higher ratios indicating greater stress; regions are typically classified as experiencing low stress below ten percent withdrawal to supply ratio, moderate stress between ten and twenty percent, high stress between twenty and forty percent, and extremely high stress above forty percent; the World Resources Institute's Aqueduct tool and similar platforms map water stress globally, revealing that major portions of the Middle East, North Africa, South Asia, and parts of North America, Europe, and China face extremely high water stress driven by a combination of high agricultural demand and limited renewable freshwater availability