Water Stress 2030 (Aqueduct 4.0)
This layer projects baseline water stress — the share of available renewable water already claimed by competing users — forward to around 2030.
Source: WRI Aqueduct 4.0 Year: 2030 Category: Physical risks · Provisioning services · Water availability Coverage: Global Format: Boundary polygons (hydrological catchments) Used in risk analysis: No (contextual layer; not used in materiality scoring)
What it shows
This layer projects baseline water stress — the share of available renewable water already claimed by competing users — forward to around 2030. It helps anticipate where chronic water competition is likely to intensify, so that exposure can be assessed against future as well as present conditions.
How it is built
This is a forward-looking version of the Water Stress (Aqueduct 4.0) layer. It represents long-term, chronic water-stress trends centred on 2030 (covering roughly 2015–2045), reported as the median across five global climate models to smooth out single-model uncertainty. As with the baseline layer, values are provided for hydrological catchment areas worldwide.
How to read it
Higher values indicate greater projected competition for water and therefore higher future water-supply risk; lower values indicate comparatively secure supply. Because this is a projection, it should be read as an indication of direction and relative pressure rather than an exact forecast.
Class thresholds
The underlying quantity is baseline water stress — the ratio of total water withdrawals to available renewable supply, expressed as a percentage (%) — projected to the 2030 horizon (median across five climate models). The symbolised field (ws_2030) carries Aqueduct's standard water-stress category, with the percentage break points embedded in each class label:
| Class | Water stress (withdrawals ÷ supply) |
|---|---|
| Arid and low water use | (special case — very low water use) |
| Low | < 10% |
| Low-medium | 10 – 20% |
| Medium-high | 20 – 40% |
| High | 40 – 80% |
| Extremely high | > 80% |
This layer is contextual and is not used in materiality scoring; its configuration carries no proximity trigger (proximities = []), so it does not raise a materiality flag on its own.
How these thresholds were set. The five-class percentage split follows the WRI Aqueduct 4.0 methodology: the classes (Low <10%, Low-medium 10–20%, Medium-high 20–40%, High 40–80%, Extremely high >80%, plus an "Arid and low water use" special case) are WRI's published water-stress thresholds, not a Darwin classification. Darwin reproduces the Aqueduct categories as delivered.
Reference: WRI Aqueduct — wri.org/aqueduct.
Source
WRI Aqueduct 4.0 projected water risk, 2030 horizon (World Resources Institute).
Comparison with the WWF Risk Filter Suite
The WWF Risk Filter Suite publishes present-day indicators only. This is a forward-looking, future-dated version of the Water Stress indicator (BRF S1_1 / WRF B1_2) and has no distinct WWF equivalent; it should be understood as a temporal scenario variant of a risk WWF already covers for the present day.
Legend
Symbolised field: Water Stress 2030
| Label | Colour |
|---|---|
| Arid and low water use | #d3d3d3 |
| Low (<10%) | #74afd1 |
| Low-medium (10-20%) | #aac7d8 |
| Medium-high (20-40%) | #f8ab95 |
| High (40-80%) | #f27454 |
| Extremely high (>80%) | #ed2924 |
Generated from darwin/layers/layer-water-stress-2030-aqueduct-4-0.toml and risk_indicator_pairs.toml (develop).