The State of THE WORLD’S LAND AND WATER RESOURCES FOR FOOD AND AGRICULTURE 2025

Chapter 1 Challenges for land and water resources

Groundwater depletion

In many countries and regions, pumping water for domestic, industrial and agricultural supply is exhausting recoverable groundwater storage. Globally, groundwater is an important source of water for irrigated agriculture and its share compared with surface water is increasing. This is especially the case in arid and semi-arid regions. Intensive exploitation of many principal continental aquifers and saline intrusion along highly productive coastal plains are evident. This leads to lower groundwater levels, increased pumping costs, and greater pollution and saline water intrusion, threatening aquifer sustainability and potable water supplies and limiting agricultural production.

This flagship publication is part of The State of the World series of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

Required citation:
FAO. 2025. The State of the World’s Land and Water Resources for Food and Agriculture 2025 – The potential to produce more and better.
Rome. https://doi.org/10.4060/cd7488en

The designations employed and the presentation of material in this information product do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) concerning the legal or development status of any country, territory, city or area or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries.

Dashed lines on maps represent approximate border lines for which there may not yet be full agreement. The mention of specific companies or products of manufacturers, whether or not these have been patented, does not imply that these have been endorsed or recommended by FAO in preference to others of a similar nature that are not mentioned.

ISBN 978-92-5-140285-6
© FAO, 2025

Some rights reserved. This work is made available under the Creative Commons Attribution- 4.0 International licence (CC BY 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode.en).

Under the terms of this licence, this work may be copied, redistributed and adapted, provided that the work is appropriately cited. In any use of this work, there should be no suggestion that FAO endorses any specific organization, products or services. The use of the FAO logo is not permitted. If a translation or adaptation of this work is created, it must include the following disclaimer along with the required citation: “This translation [or adaptation] was not created by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). FAO is not responsible for the content or accuracy of this translation [or adaptation]. The original English edition shall be the authoritative edition.”

Any dispute arising under this licence that cannot be settled amicably shall be referred to arbitration in accordance with the Arbitration Rules of the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL). The parties shall be bound by any arbitration award rendered as a result of such arbitration as the final adjudication of such a dispute.

Third-party materials. This Creative Commons licence CC BY 4.0 does not apply to non-FAO copyright materials included in this publication. Users wishing to reuse material from this work that is attributed to a third party, such as tables, figures or images, are responsible for determining whether permission is needed for that reuse and for obtaining permission from the copyright holder. The risk of claims resulting from infringement of any third-party-owned component in the work rests solely with the user.

FAO photographs. FAO photographs that may appear in this work are not subject to the above-mentioned Creative Commons licence. Queries for the use of any FAO photographs should be submitted to: photo-library@fao.org.

Sales, rights and licensing. FAO information products are available on the FAO website (www.fao.org/publications) and print copies can be purchased through the distributors listed there. For general enquiries about FAO publications please contact: publications@fao.org. Queries regarding rights and licensing of publications should be submitted to: copyright@fao.org.

VIET NAM. A lone farmer walks between rice paddy fields in Yen Bai.