World Bank Report Warns 90% of Humanity Faces Land, Air, or Water Stress

A staggering 90% of the world’s population is living with either degraded land, unsafe air, or water stress, according to a new World Bank report, Reboot Development: The Economics of a Livable Planet. The study underscores how environmental decline has become an economic and social crisis, while offering evidence that restoring natural systems can generate powerful returns for growth, jobs, and resilience.

The Triple Challenge: Land, Air, and Water

The report highlights the growing overlap of three crises that threaten human well-being and economic opportunity:

• Land degradation has reduced agricultural productivity, exacerbated droughts, and stripped soils of resilience.

• Air pollution quietly undermines health, productivity, and cognitive development, contributing to lost economic potential.

• Water stress is intensifying, driven by overuse, pollution, and climate-related shifts in rainfall patterns.

In low-income countries, the picture is even more severe. The report finds that 8 out of 10 people live without access to all three essentials—healthy air, water, and land—creating profound barriers to human development.

Hidden Costs: Forests, Nitrogen, and Pollution

The World Bank identifies several environmental-economic paradoxes where short-term gains mask long-term losses:

• Deforestation: Forest loss disrupts rainfall cycles, dries soils, and worsens drought conditions, costing economies billions of dollars annually.

• The Nitrogen Paradox: Fertilizers boost crop yields but their overuse damages ecosystems and even crops, with global costs estimated at $3.4 trillion a year.

• Pollution’s silent toll: Air and water contamination weaken health, reduce labor productivity, and undermine learning outcomes, cutting deeply into future growth.

Solutions With High Returns

Despite the grim findings, the report emphasizes that restoring natural systems is possible and economically rewarding. Key opportunities include:

• Smarter fertilizer use: Improving nitrogen application practices could yield 25 times greater benefits than costs, while boosting crop productivity.

• Water safety: Scaling up water chlorination at the household level could save one in four children who die prematurely from unsafe water each year.

• Pollution markets: Market-based mechanisms to cut emissions are not only effective but highly cost-efficient, with every $1 invested yielding $26–$215 in benefits.

• Efficient resource use: Managing natural resources more effectively could cut pollution by up to 50% globally.

“People and communities are not just facing an environmental crisis, but an economic one,” said Axel van Trotsenburg, Senior Managing Director of the World Bank. “The good news is that solutions exist. If countries make the right investments now, natural systems can be restored, with substantial returns on growth and jobs.”

Policy Lessons: A Systems Approach

The report stresses that countries can pursue growth without further environmental degradation, drawing on lessons from nations that have successfully decoupled development from ecological decline. It highlights three core pillars for policy action:

1. Information – Real-time data, from air quality monitors to satellite imagery, enables governments to pinpoint problems, empower citizens, and hold actors accountable.

2. Coordination – Integrated policies across sectors prevent trade-offs, ensuring that gains in one area (e.g., pollution reduction) do not worsen conditions elsewhere.

3. Evaluation – Continuous assessment ensures reforms remain adaptive, scalable, and effective, allowing governments to replicate success and abandon failing strategies.

Turning Constraints Into Opportunities

By reframing environmental challenges as entry points for smarter development, the report argues that countries can transform constraints into opportunities. Restoring forests, cleaning water systems, and reducing pollution not only enhance human health but also open doors for new jobs, sustainable industries, and long-term competitiveness.

With mounting pressure from climate change, demographic shifts, and rising global demand for resources, the World Bank warns that the urgency of action is unprecedented. However, the evidence is equally clear: investing in nature is not only affordable, but also among the most cost-effective pathways to prosperity.