India’s groundwater in persistent decline, warns UN report
The World Meteorological Organization's State of Global Water Resources report (its latest edition, covering data through 2025) identified India, particularly its northern and north-western regions, among areas showing persistent groundwater deficits over 2022–2025.
The report attributes the decline chiefly to over-abstraction — groundwater being drawn out faster than it is naturally recharged.
Globally, 34% of monitored groundwater stations showed below-normal levels in 2025, up from 25% in 2024, with nearly two-thirds of monitored wells worldwide showing conditions outside historical norms.
Northern India's terrestrial water storage was recorded as below normal for 2025, placing the region alongside other global hotspots such as parts of the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, southern Africa, and Australia.
Groundwater as a Resource: Recharge, Over-Extraction and Governance in India
Groundwater accounts for a large share of India's irrigation and rural drinking water supply, making its depletion a food- and water-security concern rather than a purely environmental one. Overextraction occurs when withdrawal (via tube wells and borewells for irrigation) consistently exceeds natural recharge from rainfall and surface water infiltration, lowering the water table over time. India regulates groundwater through the Central Ground Water Authority (CGWA), constituted under the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986, which grants permissions for groundwater extraction and notifies over-exploited "assessment units" (blocks/talukas) where extraction is restricted.
Key Details
- The Central Ground Water Board (CGWB), under the Ministry of Jal Shakti, conducts periodic national groundwater resource assessments jointly with state governments, classifying assessment units as Safe, Semi-Critical, Critical, or Over-Exploited based on the stage of groundwater extraction.
- Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan and parts of Delhi-NCR (India's north and north-west) have long been flagged in CGWB assessments as having the highest concentration of over-exploited blocks, largely due to paddy cultivation and free/subsidized electricity for pumping.
- The Atal Bhujal Yojana (2019), a World Bank-supported central scheme, targets community-led sustainable groundwater management in over-exploited and water-stressed areas across seven states.
The UN report's finding of persistent 2022–2025 deficits concentrated in northern India directly corresponds to the CGWB's long-standing classification of Punjab-Haryana-western UP-Rajasthan as India's most groundwater-stressed belt, reinforcing that over-abstraction rather than rainfall failure is the primary driver.
Global Water Monitoring Frameworks
The World Meteorological Organization (WMO), a UN specialized agency for weather, climate and water resources, has published its annual State of Global Water Resources report since 2021, using satellite and in-situ data (including GRACE satellite gravimetry) to track terrestrial water storage, river discharge, and groundwater levels worldwide. Such global assessments feed into UN-level water security monitoring, including under Sustainable Development Goal 6 (Clean Water and Sanitation), which includes a specific indicator (6.4.2) on the level of water stress via freshwater withdrawal as a proportion of available freshwater resources.
Key Details
- The report cited is the fifth edition, meaning comparable global water-cycle data has now been compiled since roughly 2021.
- WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo described the long-term decline in global terrestrial water storage since 2014–2016 as "depleting that savings account."
- 2025 rivers globally recorded one of the driest years in over three decades, per the report, indicating a compounding effect of reduced surface flow alongside groundwater stress.
India's groundwater trend is one national data point within this broader global monitoring architecture, illustrating how international water-stress assessments (relevant to SDG 6 tracking) now explicitly flag Indian regions as at-risk.
- Report: WMO's State of Global Water Resources (2025 edition; fifth consecutive year of comparable data).
- 34% of global groundwater monitoring stations showed below-normal levels in 2025 (up from 25% in 2024).
- Persistent groundwater deficits (2022–2025) identified in northern/north-western India, parts of the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, southern Africa, and Australia.
- Primary cause cited: over-abstraction exceeding natural recharge.
- India's groundwater regulator: Central Ground Water Authority (CGWA), under the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986; assessments conducted by the Central Ground Water Board (CGWB), Ministry of Jal Shakti.