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World Bank · Climate

Annual freshwater withdrawals, total (billion cubic meters)

Annual freshwater withdrawals refer to total water withdrawals, not counting evaporation losses from storage basins. Withdrawals also include water from desalination plants in countries where they are a significant source. Withdrawals can exceed 100 percent of total renewable resources where extraction from nonrenewable aquifers or desalination plants is considerable or where there is significant water reuse. Withdrawals for agriculture and industry are total withdrawals for irrigation and livestock production and for direct industrial use (including withdrawals for cooling thermoelectric plants). Withdrawals for domestic uses include drinking water, municipal use or supply, and use for public services, commercial establishments, and homes.

Coverage
181 of 238 countries
Latest data
2022
Series
181
Unit
cubic metres
Licence
CC BY 4.0
Retrieved
2026-11-05
Indicator
annual-freshwater-withdrawals-total
Interva ID
worldbank-annual-freshwater-withdrawals-total

Recency

aging

data to 2022; catalog to 2025

Provenance

2 steps

as the publisher declares it

Versions

1

catalog snapshots

Citation

BibTeX + CSL

versioned permalink

Quality profile

This profile describes what Interva can measure in the data. It does not claim the dataset is accurate, complete, or suitable for a particular use.

Recency

50%

Latest observation is 2022; the catalog broadly reports to 2025, so this data is 3 year(s) behind (aging).

Method: Compares the dataset's latest non-projected period with the year most datasets in the catalog end in. Up to 2 years behind is current — annual data is routinely published a year or two late — and more than 5 is stale. Measured from the data, not from when Interva last crawled it.

Temporal completeness

100%

0 of 181 series skip at least one year inside their own span; the median series reports 100% of its years.

Method: Per series, years present divided by years from its first to its last observation; the median across series is reported. Annual periods are assumed, which holds for every series in the catalog today.

Geographic coverage

Measured

Covers 181 of the 238 countries in the catalog.

Method: Counts distinct geographies with at least one observation. Not scored: a regional dataset covering its region completely is not deficient for omitting the rest of the world.

History depth

Measured

The median series has 34 observations; the earliest begins in 1962.

Method: Counts non-projected observations per series. Not scored: a long history is useful for trend work and irrelevant for a cross-section.

Revisions

Measured

No observation has been restated in any vintage Interva has recorded.

Method: Counts values the publisher changed between Interva's publishes. Not scored: revising estimates is ordinary and often a sign of care, and the count is here so a reader citing a figure knows whether it moves.

Schema conformity

Not assessed

No declared schema or validation rules are attached to this dataset yet.

Validity

Not assessed

No field-level validation rules are attached to this dataset yet.

Consistency

Not assessed

Cross-series consistency rules are not defined yet. The obvious first one — whether two publishers measuring one concept agree within a stated tolerance — is a candidate.

2 scored from the data, 3 described without a score, 3 not assessed. Pipeline integrity: all 5 checks pass. Assessed 2026-11-07.

By country

Annual freshwater withdrawals, total (billion cubic meters) for each of the 181 countries it covers, with the full history.

Latest observations

CountryPeriodValueUnit
Afghanistan202220.28cubic metres
Albania20220.80cubic metres
Algeria202210.29cubic metres
Angola20220.71cubic metres
Antigua and Barbuda20220.00cubic metres
Argentina202237.69cubic metres
Armenia20223.07cubic metres
Australia202211.62cubic metres
Austria20223.14cubic metres
Azerbaijan202213.03cubic metres

Provenance

Who produced these figures, as World Bank declares it — not inferred, and each line says which published field it was read from.

  1. Produced by

    Food and Agriculture Organization

    AQUASTAT - FAO's Global Information System on Water and Agriculture, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), uri: https://data.apps.fao.org/aquastat/, publisher: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), date accessed: 20240529

    declared by worldbank in sourceOrganization

  2. Read from

    World Bank

    World Development Indicators

    declared by worldbank in source

Versions

A vintage is a dated publish of the catalog. The current entry is a catalog snapshot; checksums are not recorded yet and are shown as such.

  • CurrentCurrent catalog snapshotchecksum not recorded

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Citation

Version: catalog snapshot 2026-11-05. The record labels this as a catalog snapshot because immutable dataset releases are not stored yet.

World Bank (2026). Annual freshwater withdrawals, total (billion cubic meters). Interva. https://interva.co/dataset/worldbank-annual-freshwater-withdrawals-total (accessed 2026-11-07). catalog snapshot 2026-11-05.

BibTeX
@misc{interva-worldbank-annual-freshwater-withdrawals-total,
  title        = {Annual freshwater withdrawals, total (billion cubic meters)},
  author       = {World Bank},
  year         = {2026},
  howpublished = {\url{https://interva.co/dataset/worldbank-annual-freshwater-withdrawals-total}},
  note         = {Interva dataset worldbank-annual-freshwater-withdrawals-total; catalog snapshot 2026-11-05},
  urldate      = {2026-11-07}
}

DOI: not assigned (not assigned). The permalink is versioned by catalog snapshot; a stable dataset DOI is a later step.

API access

Every fact on this page is available from the API.

curl https://interva-api.nq5kq4f69b5zj.eu-west-3.cs.amazonlightsail.com/datasets/worldbank-annual-freshwater-withdrawals-total
curl -o worldbank-annual-freshwater-withdrawals-total.csv https://interva-api.nq5kq4f69b5zj.eu-west-3.cs.amazonlightsail.com/datasets/worldbank-annual-freshwater-withdrawals-total/download
curl "https://interva-api.nq5kq4f69b5zj.eu-west-3.cs.amazonlightsail.com/datasets/worldbank-annual-freshwater-withdrawals-total/citation?accessed=YYYY-MM-DD"
curl https://interva-api.nq5kq4f69b5zj.eu-west-3.cs.amazonlightsail.com/datasets/worldbank-annual-freshwater-withdrawals-total/quality

Full schema: https://interva-api.nq5kq4f69b5zj.eu-west-3.cs.amazonlightsail.com/docs

Open in the terminal to chart this series, compare it against other publishers, or export it with its provenance.

Annual freshwater withdrawals, total (billion cubic meters) · World Bank · Interva