Example comparison
Freshwater is a flow, not a fixed stock.
Freshwater comparisons are often misunderstood because renewable freshwater is mainly an annual flow generated inside a country, not a pile of water stored underground.
A country can have a large total renewable flow and still have a lower per-person figure if its population is very large.
What the comparison shows
This makes freshwater a good example for switching between additive totals and per-person metrics. Total renewable internal freshwater can be added across countries, while freshwater per person should be treated as a rate.
Use the app to compare both views. The total answers where the largest renewable flows are; the per-person metric changes the question to availability relative to population.
Map preview
How to explore it on the map
Open the live map with this metric and country selection already loaded. After the map opens, you can change the countries, switch metrics, drag countries between groups, or clear the comparison and start again.
Sources used on this page
- World Development Indicators: Economic, demographic, industrial, defence, water and health indicators. Source
Values are generated from the local Compare Countries data snapshot. Source reference years can differ by metric and by country.