Global Water Resources and Withdrawal Dataset

Methodology

Ingested from the World Bank World Development Indicators under CC BY 4.0. The World Bank relays material originated by other bodies — chiefly the FAO AQUASTAT programme and the WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme — and the originator is recorded per indicator. Sector shares are validated as a set: where the three do not sum to 100 ± 2 for a country-year, all three are dropped, because Hydrionis does not know which of the three is wrong and therefore publishes none of them.

What this dataset cannot tell you

Coverage

Subjects	Countries and territories — 186 held
Period	1961–2022
Units	%, km³/yr, m³/person/yr
Update cadence	Annually
Identifier	`global-water-resources` v1.0.0

Fields

Data dictionary →

Every metric this dataset carries, with the unit it is stored in and the geography level it is reported at. Full definitions are in the data dictionary.

Identifier	Field	Unit	Reported at
`renewable-water-resources`	Total renewable freshwater resources The long-term average annual flow of rivers and recharge of groundwater generated by precipitation within a country, plus inflows from upstream countries.	km³/yr	country
`renewable-water-per-capita`	Renewable freshwater per person Total renewable freshwater resources divided by population.	m³/person/yr	country
`water-withdrawal-total`	Total freshwater withdrawal The total volume of freshwater taken from rivers, lakes and aquifers for all uses in a year, before any of it is returned.	km³/yr	country
`water-stress`	Water stress Freshwater withdrawal as a percentage of available renewable freshwater resources, after accounting for environmental flow requirements.	%	country, river-basin
`withdrawal-agriculture-share`	Agricultural share of withdrawal Percentage of total freshwater withdrawal used by agriculture.	%	country
`withdrawal-industry-share`	Industrial share of withdrawal Percentage of total freshwater withdrawal used by industry, including energy cooling.	%	country
`withdrawal-municipal-share`	Municipal share of withdrawal Percentage of total freshwater withdrawal supplied through public water systems.	%	country

Rights and access

Licence position

Open with attribution. Derivative use true; redistribution true; commercial reuse true.

Attribution required:

Data from World Bank, used under CC BY 4.0.

Permitted uses

Public display
Derived analysis
API delivery
Bulk download
Commercial use

Available to: Public, Developer, Research, Professional, Enterprise. These follow from the rights of the contributing publishers, not from a Hydrionis pricing decision — no access tier can widen what a publisher withheld.

Contributing sources

World Bank — World Development Indicators (CC BY 4.0)

Suggested citation

Hydrionis (2026), Global Water Resources and Withdrawal Dataset, version 1.0.0. Retrieved from https://hydrionis.com/data/datasets/global-water-resources/

Cite the version. Hydrionis datasets change as publishers release and as methods are revised, and a citation without a version cannot be checked later.

Changelog

Version 1.0.0 — 2026-08-24

First release. Replaces the hand-transcribed country layer carried before automated ingestion.

Breaking changes

The previous transcribed country observations are retired. Their identifiers no longer resolve.

Corrections

106 country-years of sector shares were withdrawn where the three shares did not sum to 100%, including Bolivia 2020–21 at 612% and Namibia at 155% agriculture.

Additions

Full annual series in place of single reference values.

Getting the data

Machine-readable metadata for this dataset is at /api/v1/datasets/global-water-resources.json. For bulk extracts, higher-volume access or commercial licensing, see data enquiries.