Water connects us all. From melting glaciers to polluted rivers, shifting rainfall patterns to changing policy, decisions made across the globe affect the water we drink, the food we eat, and the communities we live in.

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The high ridges and alpine meadows of northern Peru’s Andes range are among the most spectacular landscapes on Earth. The mountains also are rich in gold, copper, and other minerals that have made them targets of development for centuries. Photograph @ J. Carl Ganter/CircleofBlue.org

  • Up to 3 million people in Somalia, Kenya, South Sudan, and Uganda may be displaced by the end of 2026 due to El Niño-fueled storms and flooding. 
  • Minnesota-based chemical manufacturer 3M has agreed to pay $7.35 billion in damages for contaminating groundwater with PFAS “forever chemicals.”
  • Peru’s bullish approach to lithium and uranium mining is threatening one of its most sacred glaciers, which supplies drinking water for thousands of people.  
  • A months-long water crisis in Batam, Indonesia, is being worsened, residents say, by a new data center campus. 

The Global Water News Storymap

Explore the world’s most pressing water stories, mapped. — and see how the crisis is unfolding near you and far from home. Click the image below to learn more.

Residents on the Indonesian island of Batam, home to some 1.8 million people, are voicing their indignation with a new data center campus as domestic water crises worsen.

For several months, the taps in some villages on the island have run dry, BBC reports. People have become dependent on tanker deliveries, though these supplies are reportedly foul-smelling and cloudy, fueling concerns that these offerings are contaminated. The speculation amongst community members is that their own water supply is being diverted to serve Nongsa Digital Park, a tech hub. The local utility did not comment on this theory. 

Meanwhile, a long drought caused by low rainfall has further strained local water supplies. In September, authorities told developers on the island, where more data centers are planned, that they must build desalination plants for water to cool servers, the South China Morning Post reports. 

According to the outlet, data center capacity in Southeast Asia is projected to triple from 2025 to 2030. 

Some 90 million people globally who have been forcibly displaced from their homes due to violence and persecution face severe exposure to hazardous climate risks, according to a new United Nations report. 

After fleeing conflict and war, the most frequently encountered threats are severe droughts, deadly floods, and extreme heat, according to the UN’s refugee agency. 

“For millions, climate change is not a distant threat. It is destroying shelters, undermining livelihoods and putting their hopes of rebuilding their lives at risk,” Antón Leis García, the agency’s assistant high commissioner for operations, said in a statement. “We cannot allow those who have already lost so much to be left behind in global climate action.”

The 90 million at-risk people account for three-fourths of the total global population who have been displaced. Meanwhile, climate change remains a formidable displacing force in its own right. Over the past decade, weather-related disasters have triggered more than 255 million internal displacements worldwide, equivalent to approximately 70,000 movements every day.

These concerns are made manifest in east Africa. By the end of 2026, depending on how El Niño conditions develop, up to 3 million people in Somalia, Kenya, South Sudan, and Uganda may be displaced by storms and flooding.

The Minnesota-based chemical manufacturer 3M has agreed to pay $7.35 billion to settle multiple lawsuits alleging the company’s firefighting foam and other products contaminated groundwater with PFAS “forever chemicals,” the Associated Press reports.

3M agreed to the settlement without admitting liability for the contamination, most of which took place near military bases and airports. Payments will be made over nine years to roughly 120,000 people. 

This is not the first time 3M has been ordered to financially compensate those harmed by chemical pollution. In May 2025, the company settled a similar lawsuit with the state of New Jersey for $450 million; it has also committed to paying $10.3 billion to public water suppliers across the country for PFAS detection technology. 

“The makers of PFAS forever chemicals knew how poisonous these substances were, yet they produced and thoughtlessly released them into New Jersey’s environment anyway,” Shawn M. LaTourette, commissioner of the state’s Department of Environmental Protection, said in a statement at the time. “This historic settlement marks another step toward holding polluters accountable for dangerous PFAS contamination that has wrought havoc on our water supplies, injured our natural resources, and threatened the public health.”

The recent inauguration of Keiko Fujimori, Peru’s new president, has environmentalists concerned about the future of the Quelccaya glacier, the world’s second-largest tropical ice cap and whose meltwater is a major source of drinking water for thousands of people in the Amazon basin, Mongabay reports. 

Quelccaya, which has lost 58 percent of its mass over the past 40 years, sits near the proposed sites of several long-delayed lithium and uranium mining projects. With Fujimori in charge, experts say, these projects are no longer on ice; the new president has placed transition metals, needed for electric cars and computer chips, at the center of her economic agenda. 

More than 400 square miles of land beneath Quelccaya are currently under the control of mining companies. Plans for open-pit mines, residents fear, will cause the dispersion of metal-rich dust across the glacier. Not only would metals leach into meltwater, which is consumed downstream, but the dust would accelerate the pace of glacial melt. 

Currently, the glacier holds 2.43 billion cubic meters of water, enough to last Cusco, the local department, for a century. 

The health of Quelccaya and its residents is one of many global examples demonstrating how the need for metals like lithium is coinciding with water insecurity and pollution. The metal’s global demand is expected to more than triple by 2050.

In Context: The Race for Lithium Is Becoming a Race for Water

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Christian Thorsberg is an environmental writer from Chicago. He is passionate about climate and cultural phenomena that often appear slow or invisible, and he examines these themes in his journalism, poetry, and fiction.