United States
Farms39.7%Industry47.2%Domestic13.1%
Where the Water Goes
See how countries divide freshwater withdrawals among farms, industry, and domestic use.
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How to explore
Countries take freshwater from rivers, lakes, and underground sources for farms, industry, homes, and public services. This project shows how each country's reported withdrawals split among those destinations; it does not show total water volume or scarcity.
Begin with two countries
Compare the United States and India, then read each bar as 100 parts of that place's own freshwater withdrawals.
Choose any place
Pick a country or economy. Its selection follows you through every view.
Find a similar mix
Use the three-corner plot to find records with a similar balance, then select a dot to inspect it.
Rank one destination
Choose agriculture, industry, or domestic use and see where that share is largest within the visible region.
- Freshwater withdrawal
- Water taken from a river, lake, or underground source; some of it may later return, so withdrawal is not the same as consumption.
- Withdrawal share
- The percentage of one place's reported withdrawals assigned to a sector, not the volume of water taken.
- Domestic use
- Water withdrawn for homes, municipal supply, public services, and commercial buildings.
- Economy
- A World Bank reporting unit; the list includes countries and some territories or other economies.
Freshwater withdrawals · 2022Where the
Where the
water goes
See how countries divide freshwater withdrawals among farms, industry, and domestic use.
A withdrawal is water taken from a river, lake, or underground source. Some of it may later return, so this is not the same as water consumed.
Read one withdrawal mix.
Choose a country or economy. The bar divides its reported freshwater withdrawals into 100 parts. Every later view follows your choice.
Try another
North America
United States
Industry has the largest recorded share.
Agriculture39.7%Industry47.2%Domestic use13.1%
Agricultureirrigation and livestock
Industrydirect industrial use, including power-plant cooling
Domestic usehomes, public services, and commercial buildings
The shares show the destination of withdrawals, not how many litres were taken. A small-volume country and a large-volume country can have the same shape.
Find places with a similar balance.
Each dot is one complete 2022 record. A dot moves toward the sector that takes a larger share. Choose a region, then select any dot.
Corners: agriculture · domestic use · industry
Selected: United StatesComparison: IndiaOther complete records
Put two mixes side by side.
Choose a second place. Longer sections mean a larger share of that place's own withdrawals, not more water than the other place.
India
Farms90.4%Industry2.2%Domestic7.4%
SectorDifference in recorded share
AgricultureIndia is 50.7 percentage points higher.
IndustryUnited States is 45.0 percentage points higher.
Domestic useUnited States is 5.8 percentage points higher.
A percentage-point difference compares two shares directly. It does not compare the amount of water withdrawn or the reason for the difference.
See where one share is largest.
Choose a sector. The list ranks the visible region by that sector's share. Select a row to carry it back through the page.
All regions172 complete records
How to read the source and exclusions
FAO AQUASTAT supplies the three indicators through the World Bank. Agriculture covers irrigation and livestock. Industry includes direct industrial use and cooling for thermoelectric plants. Domestic use covers homes, municipal supply, public services, and commercial buildings.
The page keeps only 2022 records with all three shares between 0% and 100% and a total within half a percentage point of 100%. Six records fail that check and remain excluded rather than repaired. National shares can hide large local and seasonal differences.
A withdrawal mix describes destination, not pressure.
It can show whether farms, industry, or domestic uses take the largest share. It cannot show total volume, consumption, water quality, scarcity, access, or why the mix differs.
Why this exists
The question
How do the agriculture, industry, and domestic shares of freshwater withdrawals differ across countries and economies in the World Bank's complete 2022 records?
What to try
Start with the United States and India, choose any of 172 complete records, select a country from a three-part comparison plot, compare two mixes directly, and rank one sector within a World Bank region.
Method and limits
About the data
I used World Development Indicators, an allowlisted World Bank source licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0. The three selected indicators are annual freshwater withdrawals for agriculture, industry, and domestic use, each expressed as a percentage of total freshwater withdrawal. Their metadata names FAO AQUASTAT as the underlying source and says the World Bank accessed that source on May 29, 2024. The World Development Indicators files were updated October 8, 2026 and retrieved October 13, 2026.
The checked-in source contains the official compressed CSV downloads for indicator codes `ER.H2O.FWAG.ZS`, `ER.H2O.FWIN.ZS`, and `ER.H2O.FWDM.ZS`, plus the World Bank country endpoint used to identify reporting units and regions. The four source files total 256,699 bytes. A standard-library Python reducer verifies their exact byte counts and SHA-256 hashes, their indicator codes, the source update date, and the FAO AQUASTAT attribution before reading them.
The reduction uses 2022 because it is the latest common year in these files. It keeps a country or economy only when the World Bank assigns it a region, all three sector shares are present, every share is between 0% and 100%, and the sum is within 0.5 percentage points of 100%. This leaves 172 records. Brunei Darussalam, Cyprus, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Maldives, and North Macedonia fail at least one of those checks, so the project excludes them rather than repairing or normalizing their values. Repeated reductions produced the same 23,163-byte browser snapshot with SHA-256 `1c1025e41b5abd0ca96d695f22f2cd3e24d2c7091c8a67d99db0bb1ef85d9c9b`. The page imports that snapshot and makes no runtime request.
The three-corner plot uses barycentric position: each record moves toward agriculture, industry, or domestic use as that share rises. The ranking gives every reporting unit equal weight; it is not weighted by population, land area, or withdrawal volume. The comparison labels percentage-point differences between shares. None of these views compares litres or cubic metres.
Withdrawal means water removed from its source, not water ultimately consumed. Agriculture covers irrigation and livestock. Industry includes direct industrial use and cooling for thermoelectric plants. Domestic use includes homes, municipal supply, public services, and commercial buildings. National shares can hide seasonal and local differences, data quality varies, and some values may be estimated or carried between observation years. The snapshot cannot establish water scarcity, access, quality, efficiency, environmental effect, or why sector mixes differ.
Skills used
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What the data shows
- Agriculture is the largest recorded share in 106 of the 172 complete 2022 records. Domestic use leads in 39, and industry leads in 27. These are counts of reporting units, not population-weighted totals.
- The United States records 39.7% for agriculture, 47.2% for industry, and 13.1% for domestic use. India records 90.4%, 2.2%, and 7.4%, respectively. The shares describe destinations, not the volume either country withdrew.
- Fifty records assign at least 80% of withdrawals to agriculture. Eighteen assign at least 50% to industry, and 34 assign at least 50% to domestic use.
- The complete records form many different mixes rather than one global pattern. The source does not show whether a mix is sustainable or explain the policies, climate, infrastructure, or economy behind it.