UN Water is the United Nations agency dedicated to water and sanitation. It publishes a flagship report every year on World Water Day, exploring the same theme as World Water Day. This report gives policy recommendations to decision-makers by offering best practices and in-depth analyses. The 2025 edition is titled ‘Water towers: mountains and glaciers’.
Stratford-on-Avon District sits in the middle of England and is a very long way from glaciers! But we are connected to them by the water cycle.
The water cycle describes how water moves above, on, and through the Earth. In the grand scheme of things, all the water that has existed on Earth has moved around the planet’s water cycle for at least 4 billion years. In that time, no new water has been created. It is the same water circulating through all places and all species and through all time. Water stored as ice is part of this water cycle, and in fact, much more water is ‘in storage’ at any one time than is actually moving through the water cycle. Short-term storage might be days or weeks for water in a lake, but it could be thousands of years for deep groundwater storage or even longer for water at the bottom of an ice cap, such as in Greenland.
Key messages for World Water Day 2025
- Glaciers are melting faster than ever. As the planet gets hotter due to climate change, our frozen world is shrinking, making the water cycle more unpredictable and extreme.
- Glacial retreat threatens devastation. For billions of people, meltwater flows are changing, causing floods, droughts, landslides and sea level rise, and damaging ecosystems.
- Glacier preservation is a survival strategy. We must work together to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and manage meltwater more sustainably for people and the planet.