Article

Plumbing Poverty: Mapping Hot Spots of Racial and Geographic Inequality in U.S. Household Water Insecurity

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Abstract

Household water insecurity is a global threat to human health and development, yet existing metrics lack a systematic consideration of geographic inequality and spatial variation. In this article, we introduce the notion of plumbing poverty as a conceptual and methodological heuristic to examine the intersectional nature of infrastructure, space, and social inequality. Plumbing poverty is understood in a dual sense: first, as a material and infrastructural condition produced by social relations that fundamentally vary through space and, second, as a methodology that operationalizes the spatial exploration of social inequality. Drawing on millions of census records, we strip household water security down to a single vital measure—the presence of complete household plumbing—to assess its spatial and sociodemographic trends. We identify distinct hot spots (geographic clusters of higher than average values) of plumbing poverty, track its social and spatial variance, and expose its fundamentally racialized nature. Our study finds that plumbing poverty is neither spatially nor socially random in the United States. Rather, plumbing incompleteness is spatially clustered in certain regions of the country and is clearly racialized: Living in an American Indian or Alaskan Native, black, or Hispanic household increases the odds of being plumbing poor, and these predictors warp and woof through space. In considering who experiences the slow violence of infrastructural dysfunction, a geography that is simultaneously ignored and unevenly expressed in the United States, we argue that analyses of space and social difference are central to understanding household water insecurity and must be prioritized in the development of cross-comparable metrics and global measurement tools. Key Words: census microdata, hot spot analysis, household water insecurity, infrastructural geographies, IPUMS.

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... The housing financial crisis is rarely-if ever-recognized as a water crisis for urban dwellers in the United States, despite growing evidence that water poverty, insecurity and unaffordability are flourishing in high-income countries [10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23] . To close this gap, this Article identifies key trends in the changing nature of urban inequality as it relates to the social reproduction of US households through the lens of water access. ...
... In this Article, we track the unequal geographies of the reproductive squeeze through the lens of water access-an infrastructural lifeline for households to survive and thrive. Alarmingly, our evidence shows that conditions of 'plumbing poverty'-a lack of household access to running water 10 -have concentrated in cities since the 1990s and expanded to more US cities since the 2008 crisis, especially for households of color. Indeed, our analysis finds that plumbing poverty has expanded from 'coastal elite' cities-such as Los Angeles, New York City and San Francisco-to a more diverse typology of US cities now experiencing more severe housing crises, including Austin, Birmingham, Houston and Portland (Oregon). ...
... The relationship of institutionalized racism in shaping water poverty in the United States is well established 10,13,16,18,30,31,[39][40][41][42][43][44][45] . Our analysis uniquely illustrates these dynamics over a significant period in the US housing sector, as households of color are increasingly excluded from the 'gains' of universal water access in US cities. ...
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The housing unaffordability and cost-of-living crisis is affecting millions of people in US cities, yet the implications for urban dwellers’ well-being and social reproduction remain less clear. This Article presents a longitudinal analysis of household access to running water—a vital component of social infrastructure—in the 50 largest US cities since 1970. The results indicate that water access has worsened in an increasing number and typology of US cities since the 2008 global financial crash, disproportionately affecting households of color in 12 of the 15 largest cities. We provide evidence to suggest that a ‘reproductive squeeze’—systemic, compounding pressures on households’ capacity to reproduce themselves on a daily and societal basis—is forcing urban households into more precarious living arrangements, including housing without running water. We analyze the case study of Portland (Oregon) to illustrate the racialized nature of the reproductive squeeze under a housing crisis. Our insights reveal that plumbing poverty—a lack of household running water—is expanding in scope and severity to a broader array of US cities, raising doubts about equitable progress towards Sustainable Development Goals for clean water and sanitation for all (SDG 6) and sustainable cities (SDG 11) in an increasingly urbanized United States.
... We also note that some households do not have any private, in-home water and sanitation infrastructure at all and thus live in a state of "plumbing poverty" (Deitz & Meehan, 2019). Recent estimates suggest that between 1.1 and 2.2 million people in the U.S. do not have such basic in-home infrastructure (Deitz & Meehan, 2019;DigDeep, 2022). ...
... We also note that some households do not have any private, in-home water and sanitation infrastructure at all and thus live in a state of "plumbing poverty" (Deitz & Meehan, 2019). Recent estimates suggest that between 1.1 and 2.2 million people in the U.S. do not have such basic in-home infrastructure (Deitz & Meehan, 2019;DigDeep, 2022). This lack of infrastructure has more severe consequences than being off of the regulated water and sewer grids, but is also more limited in prevalence. ...
... We find that while 9.1% of U.S. households rely on both private well and septics simultaneously, a slightly higher proportion of households (9.4%) rely on only one of these lightly regulated services while being served by a public system for the other. We also find a complex set of factors explain unregulated, non-grid reliance (similar to Deitz & Meehan, 2019). Both private well and septic-tank reliant households are much more likely to be non-Hispanic White, live in a single-family home or mobile home, own their home, and live outside a metropolitan area than those reliant on publicly-regulated infrastructure. ...
Article
Households reliant on unregulated, non‐grid water and sanitation infrastructure, like private wells and septic systems, face water quality and reliability deficiencies and associated negative impacts on human health at greater proportions than households reliant on publicly‐regulated, water and sewage systems. This study uses the 2019 American Housing Survey to produce the first joint, nationally‐representative analysis of household reliance on wells and septics in decades. We find that there are lower proportions of U.S. households off the regulated water grid than other contemporary estimates. We also find that while 9.1% of U.S. households rely on both private well and septics simultaneously, a slightly higher proportion of households rely on only one of these systems, with the companion infrastructure being publicly regulated. Our results show that both private well and septic reliant households are much more likely to be non‐Hispanic White, live in a single family home (a detached or attached one‐family dwelling) or mobile home (a portable habitable structure that was originally fitted with wheels to facilitate movement), and to live outside a metropolitan area than those reliant on publicly regulated service. Yet, surprisingly both private well and septic reliant households do not have lower average incomes than households reliant on regulated systems. These results suggest that federal, state and local financial assistance, technical assistance and educational programs can be better targeted to ensure that in‐need private well and septic reliant households can operate and maintain their essential water and sanitation infrastructure.
... Although concerns of water insecurity are prevalent across the western United States, they do not affect all populations equally (Deitz & Meehan, 2019;Jepson, 2012Jepson, , 2014Meehan, Jepson, et al., 2020;Meehan, Jurjevich, et al., 2020;Roller et al., 2019). Social vulnerability frameworks have been used to provide insight into the factors contributing to water insecurity by describing the conditions via which societal factors shape exposure to danger, susceptibility to harm, and the ability to respond to harm (Adger, 2006;Birkmann, 2013;Burton et al., 2018;Cutter et al., 2003). ...
... Infrastructure and institutional factors are major determinants of access to and reliability of water delivery in the United States. Native American, Black, and Hispanic households are more likely to lack adequate plumbing, with much of this "plumbing poverty" clustered in the western United States (Deitz & Meehan, 2019;Tanana et al., 2021). As an example, the Navajo Nation, a senior water-rights holder, lacks the financial and infrastructural resources to adequately access the water, reinforcing water insecure conditions (Tanana et al., 2021). ...
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Water insecurity poses a complex challenge for the western United States. Large populations are exposed and susceptible to physical and social factors that can leave them with precarious access to sufficient water supplies. Consideration of social issues by water managers can help ensure equitable supply. However, how social factors affect water insecurity conditions remains unclear. This paper reviews literature on how social vulnerability influences water insecurity in the western United States. Through a meta‐analysis, indicators measuring how dimensions of social vulnerability influence water insecurity were classified and hierarchical clustering was used to characterize the relationships among these vulnerability dimensions for the largest water‐users—the agricultural and municipal sectors. The study then assessed uncertainty associated with social vulnerability dimensions and their indicators. There is greatest evidence for the influence of demographic characteristics, socioeconomic status, and exposure. Indicators of these determinants were mainly significant and exacerbated conditions of water insecurity. Evidence for indicators of social dependence and special needs populations was limited, although studies assessing these factors showed significant agreement on their influence on water insecurity. Conceptual framings of social vulnerability and water security determined which indicators were measured, whereas studies of the water‐use sectors focused on differing associations of social vulnerability. These findings indicate the importance of recognizing the different contexts posed by water‐use sectors and diverse conceptual framings. Further, some determinants such as living conditions remain important but underexplored drivers of a community's experience of water insecurity. Understanding the uncertainty associated with these measures has implications to equitable decision making.
... low-income discounts, senior discounts, repayment plans) to help customers pay their bills (Pierce et al., 2020). Although some utilities offer stopgap financial assistance to customers in the form of CAPs, the current water policy environment limits their ability to provide sustainable forms of financial assistance (Deitz & Meehan, 2019;Rubin, 2018). ...
... Moreover, the high-poverty cities in our sample showcased adaptability with CAPs that may best be served by allowing their innovation in this area to expand, without special federal funding conditions. This would also address the procedural and recognition injustices experienced by low-income and minority communities by crafting policy funding guidelines that support local innovation (Deitz & Meehan, 2019;Food & Water Watch, 2018;Foltz-Diaz et al., 2014). This form of local intervention informed by the needs of low-income and minority residents, would also be a way for water utilities to demonstrate a commitment to procedural justice, by allowing the groups affected by cost-recovery policies or who might be eligible for CAPs to have some input on these policies that affect them. ...
Article
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Water unaffordability is a growing environmental justice crisis for vulnerable groups in the United States due to increasing water rates. These injustices disproportionately affect low-income and minority groups. We investigate how organizational capacity and learning processes influence the ways publicly managed water utilities develop and implement policies addressing water unaffordability. We also investigate the connections between financial, relational, and technical capabilities on offered customer assistance plans (CAPs). Combining these two areas of analysis, we examine how organizational capabilities and contextual factors (e.g. citywide poverty) influence the quality and efficacy of CAPs. This comparative case study of 11 cities and towns in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania draws on 33 semi-structured interviews with utility staff and other local officials, as well as a review of policy documents from utilities and online resources. Our findings demonstrate that organizational dynamics undermine the efficacy and adoption of CAPs. From interviews, the efficacy and adoption of CAPs depends on how utilities handle fixed costs and mediate knowledge gaps, and their ability to innovate around financial barriers to meet customer needs. Utilities in high-poverty cities were best situated to leverage organizational capacity in administering CAPs, regardless of utility size.
... While drawing a causal relationship between race and water insecurity is not within the scope of this research, the 2020 UN World Water Report does explicitly relate water insecurity and intersectionality, especially regarding race and class ( UN Water, 2020). Peer-reviewed studies on this issue, however, overwhelmingly exist in the North American context (e.g., Deitz and Meehan, 2019;Dickin and Gabrielsson, 2023;Harrington et al., 2023;Meńdez-Barrientos et al., 2023;Workman and Shah, 2023). For example, a spatial analysis of water insecurity across the United States by Deitz and Meehan (2019) found that deficiencies in household water infrastructure are concentrated in regions typically inhabited by racialized groups. ...
... Peer-reviewed studies on this issue, however, overwhelmingly exist in the North American context (e.g., Deitz and Meehan, 2019;Dickin and Gabrielsson, 2023;Harrington et al., 2023;Meńdez-Barrientos et al., 2023;Workman and Shah, 2023). For example, a spatial analysis of water insecurity across the United States by Deitz and Meehan (2019) found that deficiencies in household water infrastructure are concentrated in regions typically inhabited by racialized groups. Specific to Bocas del Toro, our research highlights disparities in access to water between social and racial groups, as determined by foreign and ethno-racial status. ...
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As a dimension of a blue economy, marine ecotourism should, in theory, not only increase economic viability and environmental sustainability but, most importantly, pursue socially equitable outcomes. In tropical and sub-tropical island regions, where substantial tourism development is often coupled with widespread strains on public infrastructure and services, including water access, there exists a need to better understand the expansion of this industry is felt at the community level; more importantly by individuals who are reliant on these infrastructures and services. Through a case study of the Bocas del Toro Archipelago, where water insecurity is becoming acute, we draw on and mobilize stories from local community members, alongside non-participant observations and document collection, to 1) document the experience of some community members with water insecurity and shortages, including how they perceive the roles played by the central government and marine ecotourism sector, and 2) examine how community members feel about how communities feel about policies and investment priorities of the central government regarding water insecurity, including the extent to which they view marine ecotourism development as undermining or promoting local needs. Our results underline the complex nature of marine ecotourism governance and infrastructure development outcomes in a resource-insecure island region, demonstrating that current issues are greatly impacted by historical and social underpinnings of neo-colonialism and systemic racism, misalignments of community vs. government development priorities, and eroded political trust, that shape local experiences with sustainable development and local residents’ perceptions of the ability of marine ecotourism to address issues of water insecurity. Moreover, while our focus is on the marine ecotourism industry, the significance of these findings contributes to a growing body of literature that places local experiences at the forefront of research into the implications of sustainable development in island regions.
... Food insecurity and limited access to healthful food can give individuals no choice but to rely on calorie-dense, carbohydrate-rich, processed foods, which negatively impact blood sugar in the general population [22][23][24] and AI/AN populations alike [25][26][27]. Further, as reflected in the adapted National Institutes of Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD) Research Framework [28], food insecurity is exacerbated in AI/AN communities by contributors to barriers in physical and built environments, such as water insecurity [29,30], stolen ancestral homelands, forced relocation, and environmental pollution, all of which have devastated AI/ANs traditional healthy food practices [10,31]. Further complicating AI/ANs disparate access to healthy food, AI/AN communities often experience barriers to acquiring healthy traditional foods (such as wild game, fish, fresh produce, and nuts) [31], which further worsen food security [11][12][13][14]. ...
... In AI/AN communities, food insecurity is intimately tied to decimation of traditional and cultural practices due to attempted genocide-in addition to disparate rates of poverty, transportation issues, and lack of retail stores selling fresh food [12,13,15,16,81,92]. In these communities food insecurity is exacerbated by water insecurity [29,30], stolen Native land, forced relocation, and environmental pollution, which have devastated their traditional healthy food practices [10,31]. ...
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American Indian and Alaska Natives (AI/ANs) are disproportionately impacted by gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM), subsequent type 2 diabetes, and food insecurity. It is prudent to decrease risk of GDM prior to pregnancy to decrease the intergenerational cycle of diabetes in AI/AN communities. The purpose of this project is to describe and examine food insecurity, healthy eating self-efficacy, and healthy eating behaviors among AI/AN females (12-24 years old) as related to GDM risk reduction. Methods included: secondary analysis of healthy eating self-efficacy and behaviors, and household-level food insecurity measures from an randomized controlled trial that tested the effect of engagement in a GDM risk reduction educational intervention on knowledge, behavior, and self-efficacy for GDM risk reduction from baseline to 3-month follow-up. Participants were AI/AN daughters (12-24 years old) and their mothers (N = 149 dyads). Researchers found that more than one-third (38.1%) reported food insecurity. At baseline food insecurity was associated with higher levels of eating vegetables and fruit for the full sample (p = .045) and cohabitating dyads (p = .002). By 3 months healthy eating self-efficacy (p = .048) and limiting snacking between meals (p = .031) improved more in the control group than the intervention group only for cohabitating dyads. For the full sample, the intervention group had increases in times eating vegetables (p = .022) and fruit (p = .015), whereas the control group had declines. In the full sample, food insecurity did not moderate the group by time interaction for self-efficacy for healthy eating (p ≥ .05) but did moderate the group by time interaction for times drinking soda (p = .004) and days eating breakfast (p = .013). For cohabitating dyads, food insecurity did moderate self-efficacy for eating 3 meals a day (p = .024) and days eating breakfast (p = .012). These results suggest food insecurity is an important factor regarding the efficacy of interventions designed to reduce GDM risk and offer unique insight on "upstream causes" of GDM health disparities among AI/AN communities.
... The US also reported that roughly 98% of its housed urban population had access to safely managed sanitation services, with no data provided for hygiene services [3]. However, the literature on household WaSH insecurity suggests it does exist in the US and it disproportionally affects migrant farming communities, Indigenous communities, and low-income urban communities [5,6,[15][16][17][18]. Reports such as the ones provided by the JMP are limited by the data countries share. ...
... To bring WaSH services to unhoused communities, whether be it through mobile or permanent WaSH facilities, or through Housing First programs, fiscal capital investment is needed to construct, operate, and maintain these services over the long term [17,82]. In Los Angeles, the majority of existing WaSH services are provided by the non-profit sector. ...
Article
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Background Access to water and sanitation is a basic human right; however, in many parts of the world, communities experience water, sanitation, and hygiene (WaSH) insecurity. While WaSH insecurity is prevalent in many low and middle-income countries, it is also a problem in high-income countries, like the United States, as is evident in vulnerable populations, including people experiencing homelessness. Limited knowledge exists about the coping strategies unhoused people use to access WaSH services. This study, therefore, examines WaSH access among unhoused communities in Los Angeles, California, a city with the second-highest count of unhoused people across the nation. Methods We conducted a cross-sectional study using a snowball sampling technique with 263 unhoused people living in Skid Row, Los Angeles. We calculated frequencies and used multivariable models to describe (1) how unhoused communities cope and gain access to WaSH services in different places, and (2) what individual-level factors contribute to unhoused people’s ability to access WaSH services. Results Our findings reveal that access to WaSH services for unhoused communities in Los Angeles is most difficult at night. Reduced access to overnight sanitation resulted in 19% of the sample population using buckets inside their tents and 28% openly defecating in public spaces. Bottled water and public taps are the primary drinking water source, but 6% of the sample reported obtaining water from fire hydrants, and 50% of the population stores water for night use. Unhoused people also had limited access to water and soap for hand hygiene throughout the day, with 17% of the sample relying on hand sanitizer to clean their hands. Shower and laundry access were among the most limited services available, and reduced people’s ability to maintain body hygiene practices and limited employment opportunities. Our regression models suggest that WaSH access is not homogenous among the unhoused. Community differences exist; the odds of having difficulty accessing sanitation services is two times greater for those living outside of Skid Row (Adj OR: 2.52; 95% CI: 1.08–6.37) and three times greater for people who have been unhoused for more than six years compared to people who have been unhoused for less than a year (Adj OR: 3.26; 95% CI: 1.36–8.07). Conclusion Overall, this study suggests a need for more permanent, 24-h access to WaSH services for unhoused communities living in Skid Row, including toilets, drinking water, water and soap for hand hygiene, showers, and laundry services.
... Beyond these risks, the stresses associated with poverty and lack of control over access to safe water and sanitation can negatively affect health [1,[6][7][8]. Numerous studies have shown that these issues are disproportionately experienced in low-income areas, particularly communities of color and indigenous communities [9][10][11][12][13][14]. One simple indicator of water security is tap water avoidance, which has been increasing in communities of color and other socially marginalized populations alongside environmental justice violations. ...
Article
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Negative health impacts of water insecurity are often felt most in poor and rural communities and communities of color, who are more likely to be underserved by water infrastructure and disproportionately subject to socioeconomic stressors. Despite mandated efforts to allocate significant federal resources to infrastructure funding in ‘disadvantaged communities,’ communities with the most need risk systematic exclusion from access to resources, decision-making structures, and even benefits of research intended to address inequitable infrastructure services and health outcomes in their own communities. This project aims to describe groundwork and preliminary findings from community-engaged environmental research conducted within an ongoing community-based participatory research partnership in Robeson County, NC, a majority–minority county with the lowest median household income of NC’s 100 counties. Semi-structured interviews conducted with community members were analyzed to identify concerns about drinking water security (including safety, affordability, and reliability), perceptions of water quality, averting behaviors taken due to water insecurity, and ideas for improving water security. Findings suggest that there is a high level of mistrust in community water supplies, with perceptions of poor water quality driving a reliance on bottled water. Those relying on private wells expressed greater trust in their water and lower reliance on bottled water. Concerns about affordability were less prominent than those about water quality. Insufficient water reliability (low flow) was mentioned by many respondents, including those with community water service and those relying on private wells. Most supported increasing taxes to improve water security and also recommended increasing communications between water service providers and the public to improve trust. Overall, this work suggests the need for a comprehensive assessment of the quality and reliability of community water services in Robeson County, interventions to address problems identified, and much more engagement with the community about identifying and allocating funding to solve water security problems.
... Few studies have addressed municipal incorporation as a structural determinant that can produce inequities in infrastructure access. Past studies have found that low-income and minoritized populations are less likely to be served by public water systems [50][51][52] and sewer systems 45 . If connected to public water, such communities can be more likely to face impaired water quality 53,54 . ...
... These concerns were raised both at the local and state level with reference to violent policing practices in Latin America that could use and deploy data in harmful ways and at the national and international level with the uneven benefits of donor-reliant health and water systems in South Asia. Structural issues are exposed with the differential funding of wastewater surveillance and sanitation: investments in expanding a novel mode of surveillance may replace investments in basic sanitation services, the latter a problem still widespread in the global South and rural global North; 45,46 and countries in the global South often must rely on international funders for investment and capacity building in their wastewater surveillance programs, rendering these projects financially uncertain. Furthermore, while a local community might be represented in decision-making at a smaller scale, there remain questions as to how communities made vulnerable to infectious disease are involved or consulted in global health governance, including any wastewater surveillance regulations decided at the scale of global health institutions. ...
... Recently, it has become widely accepted that High-Income Countries (HICs) have problems with universally accessible WaSH services. This access gap is being researched in the US, focusing on non-incarcerated environments, including racialized and geographical inequities (Deitz & Meehan 2019;Wutich et al. 2022). However, prisons are critical and often overlooked contexts requiring substantial improvements to basic services (Roller et al. 2023). ...
Article
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The United Nations' global minimum standards for prisons are termed the ‘Nelson Mandela Rules’ and are based on the humane treatment of incarcerated people. Of the approximately 11.5 million people incarcerated worldwide, over two million are located in the United States (US). Mass incarceration is maintained by political, economic, and societal structures of inequality and discrimination. The lens of safely managed sanitation provides a window into the treatment and lived realities of people who are incarcerated. This article synthesizes the existing literature and builds on this foundational knowledge with accounts from people who have experienced living in the US prison system. Throughout the literature and across these lived accounts we find a severe lack of privacy, emotional distress, consistent Human Rights violations, and evidence of those in positions of power in prisons using control over water and sanitation to enact excessive punishment. Denying these fundamental rights restricts people's health and well-being, and contributes to further dehumanization and trauma, which is detrimental to the individual and to the wider society. We find that one route toward revealing the extent of discrimination against incarcerated people, and beginning to make impactful, person-centered change, is focusing on full, safe, and dignified access to WaSH services.
... The structural measures of climate change adaptation are applied to delimited urban areas that are legally recognized, have identifiable owners, are accessible, and have sufficient value for investment. Conversely, such structural measures are likely not even considered for spaces that lack proper legal recognition, are low in land-use value, lack general infrastructure, and often face plumbing poverty (Deitz and Meehan 2019). Overall, however, climate adaption tends increasingly to be viewed as a contested issue, considering that climate change amplifies urban inequalities: the "focus of discussions [is about to change] from a general urban perspective to who in cities will be affected by climate change, and how" (Reckien et al. 2017, 159, emphasis in original). ...
Article
The term hotbed of vulnerability (or HoV) has recently been used to describe growing inequalities and the increased exposure of marginalized spaces to climate change impacts. What has been less addressed so far is how HoVs are the result of intersecting social processes (marginalization, informality and invisibilization) that expel racialized populations from the space of safe habitation and subject them, via territorial stigmatization and relegation, to the foreseeable impacts of climate change. HoVs emerge as the extreme outcome of the processes mentioned above, through which the concentration of multiple sources of vulnerability coalesces in one location and shapes the exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity of marginalized families. This paper uses quantitative and qualitative data to flesh out the characteristics of HoVs, first by means of a survey in 96 segregated Roma communities in Romania and, second, using an extended case study of Dăroaia, a Roma community in the Apuseni Mountains affected by floods in July 2021. Our results indicate that there are indeed synergistic effects that occur in HoVs and that these cannot be addressed only by technical means but require instead a comprehensive consideration of their social roots. Continued marginalization, informality , and invisibilization all interact to reproduce HoVs, thereby deepening their vulnerability.
... Additionally, unhoused residents have less secure access to water than their counterparts in stable housing situations (Fazel et al., 2014). Finally, residents in rural areas may lack access to public water supply (Deitz & Meehan, 2019). ...
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Environmental justice and sustainability have both become major concerns for water resource management, particularly with recent federal emphasis on environmental justice under the Biden administration in the United States. Texas, like many U.S. states, lags behind the federal government in this emphasis. While many localities have made progress in some respects—for example, some major Texas municipalities have included equity and sustainability metrics in their recent climate action plans—others have not. This has left a patchwork of persistent water management and availability issues that are exacerbated by extreme weather and worsening impacts of climate change. We provide a review of many of Texas’s water equity and sustainability challenges, both now and in a more extreme climate future. These include water access, affordability, contamination, flooding, drought, and aging infrastructure. For example, many Texas counties rank highest in the nation for flood risk, including coastal counties with high populations of disadvantaged communities and counties containing populations that live in persistent poverty in the Lower Rio Grande Valley. Additionally, approximately 44,000 Texans, or about 0.4% of the state population, lack access to complete plumbing facilities in their homes. The costs of water infrastructure leaks (estimated at about 51 gallons of water per day statewide) are shared across customers of all income levels, though they place a disproportionate burden on low-income customers. We then assess existing statewide and local policy and planning efforts and gaps in addressing these concerns in Texas. We focus particularly on the role of efforts to incorporate community voice—the ideas, concerns, needs, and expertise of impacted community members, dismantle causes of injustice, and improve equity in spending. If communities are not intentional with future development, new water infrastructure could continue to perpetuate existing harms. Thus, we provide a research agenda and recommendations for addressing some of the policy and planning gaps and persistent environmental justice issues. We aim to help water managers and policy makers identify and dismantle sources of inequity, particularly through including community voice.
... Other relational studies of states have similarly illustrated how the complex interplay of different people, institutions, and objects pattern dynamics more so than the whims of an overarching elite (Mosse 2011;Yarrow 2011). Although this isn't to say that inequality in access to state services isn't made through relations of social power (e.g., Deitz and Meehan 2019;Wells et al. 2022) Relational approaches to the state as a distributed set of entangled practices makes visible the ultimate challenge of statecraft: the differing and contradictory desires of people engaged with state processes. After all, many of the coercive aspects of bureaucracy are welcomed as instrumental pieces of social order (Lea 2021). ...
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Human waste management, an academically overlooked yet universal human experience, comprises diverse, unfolding relationships between people, materials, and institutions. This dissertation follows these entanglements through a case study of the Placencia Peninsula, Belize, where rapid tourism development occurs amidst undersized, precarious waste infrastructures. Management arises within a web of negotiations—between pipes and pathogens, citizens and states, past aspirations and imagined futures. Through these tangled relations, waste reveals itself as more than a byproduct of human life; it becomes a measure of care, governance, and ecological balance. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, this dissertation examines how non-human materialities—like water, soil, and the chemical composition of waste—shape the possibilities for management, how social institutions organize around waste as a collective problem, and how matters of care guide the discourses and decisions surrounding its treatment. In Placencia, tourism’s rapid expansion exposes the fragility of existing infrastructures, generating competing visions for the peninsula’s future: one focused on scaling up to accommodate growth, the other emphasizing local stability and environmental sustainability. By framing waste management as an entangled process rather than a singular problem to solve, this research contributes to a pragmatic anthropology that attends to the material, social, and ethical dimensions of human life. It argues for understanding management practices not as static solutions, but as evolving responses to the ongoing negotiations between people, materials, and the worlds they seek to create. Placencia’s waste, like all waste, insists on being reckoned with—persisting as a reminder of both our shared vulnerabilities and our capacities for care.
... Second, in Detroit, nearly 10% of the city's population experiences plumbing poverty through a combination of above average rates of poverty, high housing costs and lack of complete plumbing [20]. Plumbing poverty is a concept introduced by Deitz and Meehan to describe the intersectional relationship between infrastructure, space, and social inequality [24,25]. A lack of complete plumbing can manifest in several forms, including lack of hot or cold running water, a faucet in a sink, or a bathtub or shower. ...
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Understanding water users’ perceptions of drinking water quality and the water service provider are important to understand for effective communication with users. Traditionally, the primary means through which water users receive information about drinking water is via the annual Consumer Confidence Report, which summarizes water quality information at the water system-scale and not at the point-of-use. In this study, we recruited 24 water users from different homes in Detroit, Michigan to assess the effect of access to individualized data on perceptions related to their drinking water quality and service provider. Each participant had a water quality sensor node, which measured five different water quality parameters, temporarily installed in their home for four weeks. Entry interviews were completed at the time of sensor node installation. After four weeks, water quality reports summarizing the individual water quality data collected by the sensor nodes were prepared and shared with participants, after which the exit interviews were completed. We found that access to individualized water quality data positively affected participants’ perceptions of drinking water quality and safety, for example, 92% of participants rated the safety of water at the faucet as at least ‘Somewhat Safe’ in the exit interview compared to 46% in the entry interview. However, participants’ perceptions of the water service provider did not change significantly in response to this information (p > 0.05). Half of the study participants expressed interest in more frequent monitoring and communication, including actionable data that allowed participants to make more informed decisions about how to better manage their water quality at home. We saw evidence of long-term changes in response to access to individualized information with 50% reporting changes in behavior related to drinking water use. We conclude that access to localized water quality data provides actionable information that Detroit, Michigan water users value.
... This has propelled disintegration of the belief in 'modern water' -the idea that clean, affordable water is available to everyone via trustworthy systems of provision (Meehan et al., 2020). Although modern water narratives are widespread in high-income countries (HICs) research refutes them, finding stark systemic inequities in areas of the United States, New Zealand, and Australia (Te Aho, 2010; Deitz and Meehan, 2019;Hartwig et al., 2022). These studies support wider theory which argues that active or passive exclusion from water and sanitation services can exist anywhere, regardless of a country's income level (Jepson and Vandewalle, 2016;Sultana and Loftus, 2020;Brown et al., 2023). ...
... Our study may have limited generalizability beyond the U.S.; there is long history of scholarship establishing that people in the Global South suffer disproportionately from water injustices [8,[131][132][133][134][135]. Recent scholarship suggests that similar dynamics of inequality, under-investment, and systemic racism underscore water injustices in the Global North and Global South alike [5,10,19,73,104,[136][137][138][139][140]. Future research is needed to conceptualize MAD water injustices-and the opt-out and shove-out dynamics that underlie them-in ways that span the Global North and Global South. ...
... Although these complete plumbing data do not specifically align with the 'safely managed sanitation' definition, lack of complete plumbing is likely to correlate strongly with unsafely managed sanitation. Plumbing poverty in the United States is not spatially or socially random, and disproportionately affects Indigenous, Black and Hispanic populations [105][106][107] . At the county level, incomplete plumbing is associated with older populations, lower incomes or areas with higher poverty, more rural areas and populations with lower levels of education 106 . ...
... The lack of a plumbed connection to potable water is one of several ways that water insecurity is experienced by a household. A study by Deitz and Meehan (2019) examined the spatial and sociodemographic distribution of households lacking a plumbed connection to potable water in the United States. Their work identified several hotspots of "plumbing poverty," which are shaped by race, ethnicity, and class. ...
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Drought is a complex hazard, with many interconnected impacts on environment and society. Droughts are difficult to monitor as they are slow-moving events with impacts that are not always visible. There is an increasing call to study and monitor droughts as a human-environment process and to provide climate services that can inform proactive decision-making on drought. While climate services strive to make droughts visible and therefore manageable for society, many of the equity issues that arise during periods of drought remain largely invisible. In this article we explore inequity in drought impacts in the US Southwest, focusing on agriculture, household water security, and wildfires. Drawing from lessons in the literature on equity, environmental justice, and climate services as well as our experience researching drought impacts in the Southwest, we recommend that climate services can support drought decision making that addresses equity issues by: 1) integrating both physical and social dimensions of drought in climate services; 2) investing in engagement and trust-building with diverse communities; and 3) better integrate place-based knowledge to reconcile scaling challenges. With the acceleration of the warming and drying of many parts of the world, there is an ever-increasing need to focus on reducing inequities in drought preparedness and response, which we propose starts with production of drought information that is more reflective of how droughts are experienced across all parts of society.
... For example, Sultana (2021) illustrated that the struggle for water resources is intertwined with everyday emotional realities that produce differentiated use, access, and control outcomes for different individuals and groups. Beyond social differentiation and stratification, geographers and other social scientists have also demonstrated the importance of time in uneven access to resources in the Global South (Rusca et al. 2017;Valdivia 2018;Valle and Godoy 2019;Rosinger et al. 2021), and the Global North (Ranganathan 2016;Deitz and Meehan 2019). Although these studies provide critical insights into the complex interconnections between human bodily experiences and resources, they are often inclined toward the broad socioecological dimensions of embodiment. ...
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... 8 Multiple examinations at the national and local scales suggest that incomplete plumbing in the United States is not only a function of local wealth inequalities but also strongly correlated with race and/or ethnicity. 9,10,11,12,13,14 For example, a recent national examination by Mueller and Gasteyer of plumbing access and Safe Drinking Water Act compliance determined that county levels of incomplete plumbing were significantly predicted by the Indigenous proportion of population, income, and poverty level. 15 These findings concur with the national examination of Integrated Public Use Microdata Series data by Deitz and Meehan, who demonstrated that income, homeownership, and race/ethnicity were correlated with incomplete plumbing; that is, numbers of Black, Indigenous, and Hispanic or Latino households without complete plumbing access were higher than expected given representation within the national population. ...
... L. Carter, 2018;Feagin, 2020;Mills, 2015), this worldview is activated and practiced at the interpersonal levels of social relations to generate inequities that pattern disparities in individual and group outcomes (Byron & Roscigno, 2019;P. L. Carter, 2018;Deitz & Meehan, 2019;Ray, 2019;Rosa & Díaz, 2020). In schools, the teacher-student engagement is one critical mechanism by which racial views that sustain White racial worldview can be translated through teachers toward students, leading to differential characterization and treatment of students who deviate from White racial views and generating disparities in educational outcomes (Diamond & Lewis, 2019;McKown & Weinstien, 2008;Voight et al., 2015). ...
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This study uses latent transitional analysis to examine the longitudinal association between racial discrimination and academic self-efficacy in teacher–student interactions. Two levels of teacher–student interactions are examined: low-risk, in which students perceive no probability of racial discrimination, and high-risk, in which students perceive probability of racial discrimination. Participants were drawn from the Maryland Adolescent Development in Context Study ( N = 574: 202 White and 372 Black, mean age = 13.64 [ SD = .42]). Findings revealed that students perceiving no racial discrimination, regardless of sociodemographic factors, showed consistently strong positive academic self-efficacy as they transitioned from lower to higher grade levels compared with those perceiving racial discrimination. Accounting for racial discrimination, there were no differences in academic self-efficacy beliefs between Black and White students. Students’ perceived racial discrimination in teacher–student interactions impacted negatively on academic self-efficacy.
... Inadequate access to water and sanitation is prevalent among communities in the U.S. with higher American Indian and Alaskan Native households 14 . Similar evidence was also presented in 15,16 . ...
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This research proposes a data-driven approach to identify possible disparities in a utility’s outage management practices. The approach has been illustrated for an Investor-Owned Utility located in the Midwest region in the U.S. Power outage data for approximately 5 years between March 2017 and January 2022 was collected for 36 ZIP/postal codes located within the utility’s service territory. The collected data was used to calculate the total number of outages, customers affected, and the duration of outages during those 5 years for each ZIP code. Next, each variable was normalized with respect to the population density of the ZIP code. After normalizing, a K-means clustering algorithm was implemented that created five clusters out of those 36 ZIP codes. The difference in the outage parameters was found to be statistically significant. This indicated differential experience with power outages in different ZIP codes. Next, three Generalized Linear Models were developed to test if the presence of critical facilities such as hospitals, 911 centers, and fire stations, as socioeconomic and demographic characteristics of the ZIP codes, can explain their differential experience with the power outage. It was found that the annual duration of outages is lower in the ZIP codes where critical facilities are located. On the other hand, ZIP codes with lower median household income have experienced more power outages, i.e., higher outage counts in those 5 years. Lastly, the ZIP codes with a higher percentage of the White population have experienced more severe outages that have affected more customers.
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In addition to the 2.2 million Americans without safe water and sanitation in their homes, millions more regularly face service shut-offs either due to breakages or because of non-payment of bills. Households in areas outside administrative and service boundaries struggle to maintain private systems. Historic disinvestment in majority of African American cities, and decades of underinvestment in water infrastructure, have led to near collapse of many systems. The 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure and Investment Jobs Act, passed by the United States government, is a historic opportunity to reinvest in water, especially in underinvested communities. These communities need significant assistance to prioritize appropriate investments, apply for available funding, and identify implementation partners. If this does not happen, the inequalities in access will be worsened. Coalitions of technical assistance providers and community-based organizations can help by identifying and matching providers with appropriate funding streams in the short term, while building their capacity to apply for larger federal funds. However, capital investment is only the first step toward equity. It is crucial that water and sewer rates be adjusted to account for household income, and service providers who serve large under-resourced areas receive long-term assistance for operation and maintenance of valuable assets.
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With the outbreak of COVID‐19, wastewater surveillance for public health rapidly emerged and expanded globally. In this article we chart the variegated ecosystem of private firms that work closely with public and non‐profit entities to transform metabolic flows of sewage into vital and valuable bioinformation, thereby creating new multi‐institutional spaces of public health governance. We draw on literature in urban political ecology and political economy to ask: what are the emerging political economic actors, practices, and relations of wastewater surveillance? And how are emergent multi‐institutional public‐private partnerships and contracts transforming public health governance? To answer these questions, we use mixed qualitative methods to trace the field across North America, the Middle East and South Asia. Drawing on interviews, document and report reviews, financial reporting and observation at conferences, we find that these emerging public‐private partnerships present concerning transformations in health governance where profits displace public health needs, proprietary technologies blackbox public health decisions, and vulnerable populations are experimented on for prototyping technology. Our work contributes to renewed interest in urban political ecology's analysis of metabolism by tracing how, during health crises and their aftermath, public and private actors are together reconfiguring flows of waste, labour and technology to unlock new metabolic reservoirs of bioinformation.
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While comprehensive data are lacking, estimates suggest at least two million Americans do not have access to basic water, sanitation, and hygiene (WaSH) services. These WaSH challenges are not uniformly distributed throughout the country, but rather, occur in pockets along lines of race and class, mirroring historical and current patterns of marginalization and disenfranchisement. Given the highly context-specific challenges and the geographic, cultural, and policy environments in which they have been produced, the CDC Foundation set out to support community-based organizations (CBOs) in responding to WaSH challenges within their respective communities (n = 7). The mixed-methods evaluation of the application of this CBO model to address WaSH challenges in the United States, suggests that this approach shows promise to bolster CBO capacity to address WaSH gaps within their communities, addressing immediate physical and informational needs. However, additional work is needed to understand the sustainability of these changes and how programs can be designed to support longer-term, systems change.
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This study uses linked administrative data on live births, hospital stays, and census records for children born in Hungary between 2006 and 2011 to examine the relationship between poor housing quality and the health of newborns and children aged 1–2 years. We show that poor housing quality, defined as lack of access to basic sanitation and exposure to polluting heating, is not a negligible problem even in a high-income EU country like Hungary. This is particularly the case for disadvantaged children, 20–25% of whom live in extremely poor-quality homes. Next, we provide evidence that poor housing quality is strongly associated with lower health at birth and a higher number of days spent in inpatient care at the age of 1–2 years. These results indicate that lack of access to basic sanitation, hygiene, and non-polluting heating and their health impacts cannot be considered as the exclusive problem for low- and middle-income countries. In high-income countries, there is also a need for public policy programs that identify those affected by poor housing quality and offer them potential solutions to reduce the adverse effects on their health.
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Objectives More than 3300 rural Alaska Native homes lack piped water, impeding hand hygiene. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention partnered with 10 Tribal communities and regional Tribal health organizations to install a low-cost, intermediate-technology water and sanitation system, the Miniature Portable Alternative Sanitation System (Mini-PASS). We assessed the impact of the Mini-PASS handwashing station on handwashing, other water-related uses, and problems encountered over time. Methods In this pre–postintervention study, we conducted semi-structured interviews by telephone seasonally with representatives of 71 households with the Mini-PASS from February 2021 through November 2022 to assess the impact of the units on water use and health. Results Before Mini-PASS installation, all participating households primarily used washbasins for handwashing. Postintervention, more than 70% of households reported using the Mini-PASS as their primary handwashing method in all 3 follow-up intervals (3, 6-9, and 12 months postintervention). The proportion of households using the handwashing station for other household tasks increased during 12 months, from 51.4% (19 of 37) at 3 months postintervention to 77.8% (21 of 27) at 12 months postintervention. Although approximately 20% to 40% of households reported problems with their handwashing station during the 12 months postintervention, a large proportion of interviewees (47% to 60%) said they were able to conduct repairs themselves. Conclusions Households in rural Alaska quickly adopted the Mini-PASS for hand hygiene and other needs and were largely able to troubleshoot problems themselves. Further research evaluating the impact of improved handwashing behaviors facilitated by the Mini-PASS should be conducted.
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Results.: Hispanic children have higher odds of growth stunting than non-Hispanic White children. Native American children die younger and have higher odds of respiratory diseases and porous lesions than Hispanic and non-Hispanic Whites. Rural/urban location does not significantly impact age at death, but housing type does. Individuals who lived in trailers/mobile homes had earlier ages at death. When intersections between housing type and housing location are considered, children who were poor and from impoverished areas lived longer than those who were poor from relatively well-off areas. Conclusions.: Children's health is shaped by factors outside their control. The children included in this study embodied experiences of social and ELS and did not survive to adulthood. They provide the most sobering example of the harm that social factors (structural racism/discrimination, socioeconomic, and political structures) can inflict.
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Ecosystem services are important for human well-being and maintaining environmental quality objectives. The growing concern over extreme wildfire events in various watersheds necessitates understanding their impacts particularly on regulating ecosystems services. In this study, we used the Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Trade-offs (InVEST) model to examine how two wildfires that occurred in California, USA in 2017 impacted water provisioning, soil loss and sediment delivery, carbon sequestration services, and nutrient delivery in the waterways. We also related the distributional impacts of wildfire to ecosystem service supply based on various sociodemographic factors across the affected communities to assess their vulnerabilities. We find that a year following the fires, the amount of biomass in forestland, woodland, and chaparral declined, as expected, in both studied watersheds, while the amount of grassland increased. This change in vegetation resulted in the loss of about 200,000 tons of carbon from the Mark West subwatershed and about 160,000 tons of carbon from the Southern California watersheds. Furthermore, the fires increased the expected mean annual water yield significantly for both watersheds by 5% and 42%, respectively. Our analysis shows an increase in the expected post-fire phosphorus and nitrogen export. Using regression analyses to determine the effect of wildfire on the distributional impacts to ecosystem services across communities in the watersheds, we did find evidence of differences between communities with respect to the pre-fire distribution of ecosystem services. However, we did not find that post-fire condition either exacerbated or alleviated these distributional impacts and inequities.
Chapter
Considered one of the greenest cities in the world, Portlanders have enjoyed clean air and water with lush vegetation in and around town for decades. Portland is prone to winter and spring floods because the city is located at the confluence of the Columbia and the Willamette Rivers and Lain on Missoula flood deposits. The city shows highly flood vulnerable areas clustered in the historically developed areas in the lowlands that often serve low-income immigrants. Portland has improved stormwater management by a combination of grey and green infrastructure. With the intentional installation of storm green infrastructure in low-income and flood-vulnerable neighborhoods as well as a pioneering program such as a willing seller land acquisition program to move residents out of floodplains, the city strives to achieve its social and environmental equity goals. However, recent climate-related water hazards and development pressures challenge flood risk management. With a unique urban growth boundary containing growth within the limit, Portland has become denser. Such dense development, which often encourages development on floodplains, leads to uncoordinated efforts between land use and water planning, hindering a futuristic climate resilience plan that includes creating a flood-resilient city.
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In the United States, underbounded communities—urban disadvantaged unincorporated neighborhoods characterized by high-poverty and high residential density lying just outside the border of an incorporated municipality—often lack consistent access to clean and safe water. Poor water quality and inadequate infrastructure shape residents’ risk perceptions, often leading to tap water mistrust, but little is known about the broader social, political, and economic drivers of water quality in these settings or about how such drivers inform the social construction of risk across different stakeholder groups. Using an underbounded African-American/Hispanic neighborhood in the Tampa Bay metropolitan region as a case study, we illustrate how tap water mistrust is socially constructed and how these constructions contrast between neighborhood residents and government officials. Interviews and participant observation with these groups reveal that tap water mistrust emerges from the nexus of inadequate infrastructure, poor housing conditions, challenges relating to the affordability of piped water, and jurisdictional disconnects. We call for interventions that foreground participatory research, integrate social and cultural context into technical solutions, and prioritize equitability in decision making.
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Background: Tap water distrust and avoidance, indicators of water insecurity, are prevalent in marginalized US populations. As future environmental challenges stress water resources, further understanding of the scope of water insecurity and impact on diet quality is needed, particularly in vulnerable US populations. Objectives: To evaluate associations between three potential indicators of water insecurity - 1) perception of tap water safety for drinking, 2) perception of tap water safety for cooking, and 3) tap water avoidance - and dietary quality and beverage intake in lower-income US adults. Methods: A cross-sectional, web-based survey was fielded to 1798 lower-income (<250% FPG) US adults. Participants answered questions detailing tap water safety perceptions and avoidance, beverage intake, dietary intake (PDQS-30), and sociodemographic covariates. Sociodemographic differences in drinking water insecurity measures were evaluated using chi-square and Fisher-Freeman-Halton tests. Associations between water insecurity measures and dietary outcomes were assessed using generalized linear models adjusted for sociodemographic covariates, and effect modification by sociodemographic covariates was assessed. Results: Over half of adults surveyed experienced some aspect of water insecurity. Measures of water security differed significantly by sociodemographic covariates (Ps<0.05), with higher percentages of women and gender-nonconforming persons, minoritized racial and ethnic groups, lower-income groups, and food insecure adults more likely to report indicators of water insecurity. Presence of any water insecurity was associated with lower diet quality (β=-1.07; 95%CI: -2.11, -0.03; P=0.04), lower tap water intake (Risk Difference [RD]=0.35; 95%CI: 1.28, 2.12; P<0.0001), higher bottled water intake (RD=1.64; 95%CI: 1.28, 2.12; P =0.0001), and higher SSB intake frequency (Frequency Ratio [FR]=1.13; 95%CI: 1.01, 1.27; P =0.03). Conclusions: Water insecurity indicators are associated with poorer diet quality and beverage intake in a population of lower-income US adults. Addressing the intersection of water insecurity, food security, environmental impacts and nutrition may help to improve the wellbeing and resiliency of vulnerable populations.
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Disparities in access to water, sanitation, and hygiene within high-income countries are common and often occur across racial/ethnic lines. The Arab-Bedouins in Israel, a formerly nomadic ethno-national minority, have experienced displacement, forced sedentarization, and poverty since Israel was founded. Land disputes with the government have led to precarious living arrangements, including unrecognized villages that the government considers illegal. We administered a structured questionnaire in one government-planned, two legally recognized, and two unrecognized Bedouin communities in the Negev (190 households). Only 44% (95% CI 37%, 51%) of households had access to both safely managed drinking water and sanitation; nationally Israel reports over 99% coverage for each. In one unrecognized village, only 15% of households had access to safely managed water and sanitation, comparable to low-income countries. The overall 1-week prevalence of diarrhea in children under 5 years of age was 22% (95% CI 17%, 27%), with substantial variation between communities. These results highlight that universal access to safely managed drinking water and sanitation remains a relevant goal, not only for low- and middle-income countries but for high-income countries. Bedouin communities in the Negev are a prime example, emphasizing that historic gains in global development have not uniformly reached marginalized groups within high-income countries. HIGHLIGHTS Land rights disputes between the Bedouins and the Israeli government have led to poor access to safely managed water and sanitation.; We found that only 44% of households sampled in five Bedouin localities had access to both a safely managed water source and safely managed sanitation.; In one unrecognized village, access to safely managed water and sanitation was worse than in many of the world's poorest countries.;
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Largescale “big” water infrastructure is once again at the forefront of the global developmentalist agenda and is receiving attendant scholarly attention. Given this parallel growth, now is time to take stock of current scholarly contributions and explore opportunities for future research. In this paper, I review recent developments and insights gained from research on big water infrastructure, and water infrastructure studies, generally, to highlight six key threads of current scholarship. These include the production of big water infrastructure as: (1) a temporal process embedded in colonialism and ecological modernization; (2) infused with infrastructural knowledges, practices and subjectivities; (3) a spatial‐geopolitical process; (4) subject to infrastructural and environmental material characteristics and capacities; (5) producing uneven development and enabling accumulation by dispossession; and (6) a contested process of differentiated socio‐material resistance. In reviewing this literature, I argue that these six research strands form key analytic considerations that could be employed by others studying the nexus between water development, political ecological change, and infrastructure. Before concluding, in the final section of the paper I present additional and ongoing future research directions including big water infrastructure as it intersects with socially differentiated human intimacy and embodiment, indigenous and racialized forms of dispossession, and financialization.
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This article draws on scholarship in Southern theory to ‘world’ the study of water’s urbanization. This means complicating scholarship by widening the focus beyond the application of Northern norms to engage with complex and diverse practices in Southern cities. For water’s urbanization, this means focusing on what water supply is for the majority: neither the centralized piped-water network nor its absence, but the range of practices and technologies that unite people, nature and artefacts in a complex socio-ecological politics of water. Drawing on scholarship from Southern urbanisms, urban political ecology, and science and technology studies, we illustrate how expanding water’s urbanization to include more than networked infrastructure in Jakarta draws attention to the importance of ecological connections between piped water, groundwater, wastewater and floodwater. Thinking beyond the network requires deeper engagement with the ecological connections between the diverse flows of water in and around urban environments. These produce distinct forms of fragmentation that are missed when analysis is limited to piped-water supply. The emphasis on ecological connections between flows of water and power seeks to draw attention back to the importance of the uneven exposure to environmental hazards in cities in which neither water nor nature are wholly contained by infrastructure.
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Using a relational approach, I examine several cultural dimensions involved in household water access and use in Newtok, Alaska. I describe the patterns that emerge around domestic water access and use, as well as the subjective lived experiences of water insecurity including risk perceptions, and the daily work and hydro-social relationships involved in accessing water from various sources. I found that Newtok residents haul water in limited amounts from a multitude of sources, both treated and untreated, throughout the year. Household water access is tied to hydro-social relationships predicated on sharing and reciprocity, particularly when the primary treated water access point is unavailable. Older boys and young men are primarily responsible for hauling water, and this role appears to be important to male Yupik identity. Many interviewees described preferring to drink untreated water, a practice that appears related to cultural constructions of natural water sources as pure and self-purifying, as well as concerns about the safety of treated water. Concerns related to the health consequences of low water access appear to differ by gender and age, with women and elders expressing greater concern than men. These preliminary results point to the importance of understanding the cultural dimensions involved in household water access and use. I argue that institutional responses to water insecurity need to incorporate such cultural dimensions into solutions aimed at increasing household access to and use of water.
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Despite the central importance of water for human wellbeing and development, researchers and practitioners have few tools to quantitatively measure, assess, and compare the scope and scale of household and individual water insecurity across cultural and climatic variations. There are multiple definitions of water insecurity, and the analytical tools for measuring household‐level water insecurity are in their infancy. This paper provides an overview and systematic evaluation of current household and individual water in security metrics for human development. We seek to advance micro‐level metrics—attending to the considerations of dimensionality, temporality, unit of analysis, and comparability—because they will provide the research community with necessary tools to untangle the complex determinants and outcomes of water insecurity. Moreover, such metrics will support the translation of research outcomes into meaningful and useful products and results for stakeholders, communities, and decision‐makers. WIREs Water 2017, 4:e1214. doi: 10.1002/wat2.1214 This article is categorized under: Human Water > Methods
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The lead poisoning of Flint, Michigan’s water is popularly framed as a case of “environmental racism” given that Flint’s population is mostly black and lower income. In this essay I argue that we see the environmental racism that underlies Flint’s water poisoning not as incidental to our political-economic order, nor even as stemming from racist intent, but as inseparable from liberalism, an organizing logic we take for granted in our modern age. I expand on the idea of “racial liberalism” here. While upholding the promise of individual freedoms and equality for all, racial liberalism—particularly as it was translated into urban renewal and property making in mid-20th-century urban America—drove dispossession. In Flint racialized property dispossession has been one major factor underlying the city’s financial duress, abandonment, and poisoned infrastructure. Yet, through austerity discourse, Flint is disciplined as if it were a financially reckless individual while the structural and historical causes of its duress are masked. Tracing the history of property making and taking in Flint and the effects of austerity urbanism on its water infrastructure, my central argument is that our understanding of Flint’s predicament—the disproportionate poisoning of young African-Americans—can be deepened if we read it as a case of racial liberalism’s illiberal legacies.
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Small-scale decentralised facilities and household-level water purification technologies (HWTs) have become unconventional modes of delivering potable water. This paper examines how HWTs transformed from a temporary solution to unsanitary drinking water conditions in the global South to a legitimised technological fix for communities that experience chronic household water insecurity in the United States. We examine the discursive and material processes through which HWTs are applied in periurban and rural subdivisions on the Texas–Mexico border, called colonias. HWTs, through the intervention of social entrepreneurs, experts, and the state, mediate water governance by rearticulating the individual solution and foreclosing a collective or political process to improve community water systems for colonia residents.
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This article examines household-level characteristics that predict water insecurity in low-income rural and periurban communities on the Texas–Mexico border. We employ two logistic regression models (binary and ordered) to identify household characteristics that are more likely to result in water insecurity. Our analyses yielded unexpected findings: Whereas socioeconomic factors are weak predictors, immigration status of household members is a significant variable that contributes to household water insecurity. Policymakers need to pay more attention to marginalized communities as " universal " water access still leaves populations without adequate, reliable, and affordable water in the Global North. Este artículo examina, en el area limítrofe Texas-M exico, las características que a nivel de hogares predicen problemas de inseguridad hídrica en comunidades rurales y periurbanas de bajos ingresos. Empleamos dos modelos de regresi on logística (binario y ordenado) para identificar las características de los hogares m as propensos a ser afectados por la inseguridad hídrica. Nuestros an alisis generaron resultados inesperados: En tanto que los factores socioecon omicos son predictores d ebiles, el estatus de inmigraci on de los miembros del hogar es una variable significativa que contribuye a la inseguridad hídrica del hogar. Los encargados de formular políticas deben poner mayor atenci on a las comunidades marginadas, por cuanto el acceso " universal " al agua todavía deja poblaciones en el Norte Global sin agua adecuada, confiable y econ omicamente accesible. Palabras clave: colonias, seguridad hídrica para el hogar, regresi on logística, Texas, recursos hídricos.
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This article reconsiders the epistemic and geographic boundaries that have long separated scholarship on urban water poverty and politics in the Global North and South. We stage an encounter between the seemingly dissimilar cases of Tooleville outside of the city of Exeter in California’s Central Valley and Bommanahalli outside of Bangalore, India, to illuminate the geography of water marginalization at the fringes of urban areas, and to deepen cross-fertilization between two geographic literatures: environmental justice (EJ) and urban political ecology (UPE). We argue that there is scope for transnational learning in three arenas in particular: (1) water access, (2) state practice, and (3) political agency. In so doing, we aim to advance a genuinely post-colonial approach to theory and practice in the pressing arena of urban water politics.
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Downloadable at: www.farhanasultana.com This Advanced Review analyzes recent debates over the human right to water. While accepting critiques from scholars that the right to water risks entrenching unequal and unjust forms of water governance, the paper nevertheless takes a more sympathetic view of the potentials within struggles for the right to water. Recognizing that such struggles can take many different forms, we urge scholars to adopt more nuanced and geographically sensitive analyses of the conditions out of which movements for the right to water have emerged. We reject the claim that the right to water depoliticises struggles for water justice and we instead find conditions of possibility for deeper and more lasting changes to water governance within struggles for the right to water.For further resources related to this article, please visit the WIREs website.Conflict of interest: The authors have declared no conflicts of interest for this article.
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This article provides a framework for understanding water problems as problems of justice. Drawing on wider (environmental) justice approaches, informed by interdisciplinary ontologies that define water as simultaneously natural (material) and social, and based on an explicit acceptance of water problems as always contested, the article posits that water justice is embedded and specific to historical and socio-cultural contexts. Water justice includes but transcends questions of distribution to include those of cultural recognition and political participation, and is intimately linked to the integrity of ecosystems. Justice requires the creative building of bridges and alliances across differences.
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With few exceptions, STS theories of infrastructure stability and change have not been applied to circumstances in the South. Developed in post-War Europe, these theories are often applied in ways that lack transferability to situations where infrastructure conditions are precarious and hybrid. This article seeks to broaden these theories by relating them to infrastructure challenges common to the South, drawing in particular on prevalent issues in water supply. Such engagement helps to identify shortcomings in these theories, to push their paradigms further, and to raise new questions related to infrastructure configuration, stability, and transition. As such, the study of sociotechnical systems across a range of contexts can be enriched. In particular, this article extends theory by placing coexistence among sociotechnical systems, as opposed to the universality of a single dominant infrastructure network, at the center of enquiry. Recognizing coexistence is important because it enables one to decouple key concepts in STS from the presumption of universalized and uniform networks, enabling them to become relevant for the South. Examples discussed in this essay include stability or “momentum” and transitions.
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With this article, we develop the Drinking Water Disparities Framework to explain environmental injustice in the context of drinking water in the United States. The framework builds on the social epidemiology and environmental justice literatures, and is populated with 5 years of field data (2005-2010) from California's San Joaquin Valley. We trace the mechanisms through which natural, built, and sociopolitical factors work through state, county, community, and household actors to constrain access to safe water and to financial resources for communities. These constraints and regulatory failures produce social disparities in exposure to drinking water contaminants. Water system and household coping capacities lead, at best, to partial protection against exposure. This composite burden explains the origins and persistence of social disparities in exposure to drinking water contaminants. (Am J Public Health. Published online ahead of print February 13, 2014: e1-e9. doi:10.2105/AJPH.2013.301664).
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This paper develops a household water security measurement for low-income peri-urban and rural communities (“colonias”) on the US–Mexico border. The complexity of a “no-win” waterscape – where water service exists but is relatively expensive and water quality is still precarious – precludes a meaningful assessment and analysis because there are no existing measurement tools to capture water insecurity at the household level. Informed by critical environmental epistemology, the paper incorporates perspectives from colonias residents through qualitative research and survey development. The study advances previous work on water security by developing a cumulative scale for each characteristic of household water security then clusters households into water security classes using a non-parametric statistical procedure. The analysis identified four water security classes: (1) Water Secure; (2) Marginally Water Secure; (3) Marginally Water Insecure; (4) Water Insecure. While all households in the survey are connected to water service, only 45% are broadly “water secure” while 55% are “water insecure.” Statistical analysis confirmed the robustness of the scaling and clustering procedure, thus, providing evidence to describe household water insecurity in “no-win” waterscapes.
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Foreword.- Section I - General Considerations in Geospatial Analysis of Environmental Health.- 1.Environmental Health and Geospatial Analysis: An Overview.- 2. Using GeoVisualization and Geospatial Analysis to Explore Respiratory Disease and Environmental Health Justice in New York City.- 3. Outdoor Air Pollution and Health - A review of the Contributions of Geotechnologies to Exposure Assessment.- 4. The Use of Residential History in Environmental Health Studies.- 5. Proximity Analysis Methods for Exposure Assessment in Environmental Health Justice Research.- Section II - Impacts on Environmental Health (Topical Case Studies).- 7. Geospatial analysis of West Nile virus (WNV) incidences in an urban environment: A Case Study in the Twin Cities Metropolitan Area of Minnesota.- 8. The Health Impacts of Brownfields in Charlotte NC: A Spatial Approach.- 9. Regional Environmental Patterns of Diarrheal Disease in Bangladesh: A Spatial Analytical and Multilevel Approach.- 10. Developing a Supermarket Need Index for New York City.- 11. Asthma, Air Quality, and Environmental Justice in Louisville, Kentucky.- 12. The Impact of Changes in Municipal Solid Waste Disposal Laws on Proximity to Environmental Hazards: A Case Study of Connecticut.- 13.Global Geographies of Environmental Injustice and Health: A Case Study of Illegal Hazardous Waste Dumping in Cote d'Ivoire.- 14. Environmental and Health Inequalities of Women in Different Neighbourhoods of Metropolitan Lagos, Nigeria.- 15. Housing Quality and Racial Disparities in Low Birth Weight: A GIS Assessment in Flint, Michigan.- Section III - Geospatial Methods in Investigating Environmental Health.- 16. Participatory mapping as a component of operational malaria vector control in Tanzania.- 17. Revisiting Tobler's First Law of Geography: Spatial Regression Models for Assessing Environmental Justice and Health Risk Disparities.- 18. A Spatially Explicit Environmental Health Surveillance Framework for Tick-Borne Diseases.- 19. Using Distance Decay Techniques and Household-Level Data to Explore Regional Variation in Environmental Inequality.- 20. Merging Satellite Measurement with Ground-based Air Quality Monitoring Data to Assess Health Effects of Fine Particulate Matter Pollution.- 21. Poverty Determinants of Acute Respiratory Infections in the Mapuche Population of Ninth Region of Araucania, Chile (2000-2005). A Bayesian Approach with Time-space Modelling.- 22. GIS and Atmospheric Diffusion Modeling for Assessment of Individual Exposure to Dioxins Emitted from a Municipal Solid Waste Incinerator.- 23. Synthesizing waterborne infection prevalence for comparative analysis of cluster detection methods.- 24. Spatiotemporal Analysis of PM2.5 Exposure in Taipei (Taiwan) by integrating PM10 and TSP observations.- Index.
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We have survived Canada's assault on our identity and our rights … Our survival is a testament to our determination and will to survive as a people. We are prepared to participate in Canada's future—but only on the terms that we believe to be our rightful heritage. Wallace Labillois, Council of Elders, Kingsclear, New Brunswick This paper argues for a strengthening of the theoretical relationship between neo-liberalism and environmental justice. Empirical research involving First Nations communities in southwestern Ontario suggests that neo-liberal reforms introduced in the mid-1990s were particularly discriminatory against Canada's indigenous peoples, serving to exacerbate historical disparities in health, environment pollution, and well-being. In particular, under neo-liberal reform in Ontario, recognition of environmental injustices has become much more difficult for First Nations communities. Furthermore, this ‘new’ form of environmental governance has broadly reduced legitimate opportunities for First Nations to participate in environmental governance that affects their health and welfare. In short, this research supports a widening of the definition of environmental justice advocated by David Schlosberg and others (Environmental Politics, 13(3) (2004), pp. 517–540; Agyeman, Bullard and Evans 20031. Agyeman , J. , Bullard , R. D. and Evans , B. 2003a. “Joined-up thinking: bringing together sustainability, environmental justice and equity”. In Just Sustainabilities: Development in an Unequal World, Edited by: Agyeman , J. , Bullard , R. D. and Evans , B. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. View all references; Akwesasne Task Force on the Environment, Research Advisory committee 1997; Di Chiro 19988. Di Chiro , Giovanna. 1998. “Environmental Justice from the Grassroots: Reflections on History, Gender and Expertise”. In The Struggle for Ecological Democracy: Environmental Justice Movements in the United States, Edited by: Faber , D. NY: Guilford. View all references) if we are to understand the subtle, complex and multiple ways that this new form of environmental governance is particularly harmful to marginalized groups, such as First Nations in Canada.
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Contrary to reports of 100% access to safe water and sanitation in international surveys, the United States (US) has a complex landscape of low-income water problems. This paper begins with a critical international perspective on water and poverty in the US. It shows that the US had a declining role in international water programs during the late-20th century, which contributed to limited international awareness of low-income water programs in the US, and limited US awareness of low-income water issues. To address the first problem, we provide an overview of low-income water programs in the US with an emphasis on those that serve small communities. We then examine census data on inadequate water systems in Colorado, which indicate that severe plumbing deficiencies persist despite these public water programs. Inadequate plumbing rates are lower than income poverty rates, however, which indicate partially successful strategies for achieving low-income water services. Analysis of local data in urban, rural, and mountainous areas of the state shows that poverty and water problems are correlated in complex ways, which has implications for all nations striving for universal access to safe water and sanitation.
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Geographically weighted regression (GWR) is an important local technique for exploring spatial heterogeneity in data relationships. In fitting with Tobler's first law of geography, each local regression of GWR is estimated with data whose influence decays with distance, distances that are commonly defined as straight line or Euclidean. However, the complexity of our real world ensures that the scope of possible distance metrics is far larger than the traditional Euclidean choice. Thus in this article, the GWR model is investigated by applying it with alternative, non-Euclidean distance (non-ED) metrics. Here we use as a case study, a London house price data set coupled with hedonic independent variables, where GWR models are calibrated with Euclidean distance (ED), road network distance and travel time metrics. The results indicate that GWR calibrated with a non-Euclidean metric can not only improve model fit, but also provide additional and useful insights into the nature of varying relationships within the house price data set.
Book
Water supply privatization was emblematic of the neoliberal turn in development policy in the 1990s. Proponents argued that the private sector could provide better services at lower costs than governments; opponents questioned the risks involved in delegating control over a life-sustaining resource to for-profit companies. Private-sector activity was most concentrated—and contested—in large cities in developing countries, where the widespread lack of access to networked water supplies was characterized as a global crisis. In Privatizing Water, Karen Bakker focuses on three questions: Why did privatization emerge as a preferred alternative for managing urban water supply? Can privatization fulfill its proponents' expectations, particularly with respect to water supply to the urban poor? And, given the apparent shortcomings of both privatization and conventional approaches to government provision, what are the alternatives? In answering these questions, Bakker engages with broader debates over the role of the private sector in development, the role of urban communities in the provision of "public" services, and the governance of public goods. She introduces the concept of "governance failure" as a means of exploring the limitations facing both private companies and governments. Critically examining a range of issues—including the transnational struggle over the human right to water, the "commons" as a water-supply-management strategy, and the environmental dimensions of water privatization—Privatizing Water is a balanced exploration of a critical issue that affects billions of people around the world.
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The purpose of this book is to present an overview of the latest research, policy, practitioner, academic and international thinking on water security—an issue that, like water governance a few years ago, has developed much policy awareness and momentum with a wide range of stakeholders. As a concept it is open to multiple interpretations, and the authors here set out the various approaches to the topic from different perspectives. Key themes addressed include: Water security as a foreign policy issue The interconnected variables of water, food, and human security Dimensions other than military and international relations concerns around water security Water security theory and methods, tools and audits. The book is loosely based on a masters level degree plus a short professional course on water security both given at the University of East Anglia, delivered by international authorities on their subjects. It should serve as an introductory textbook as well as be of value to professionals, NGOs, and policy-makers. https://www.routledge.com/Water-Security-Principles-Perspectives-and-Practices/Lankford-Bakker-Zeitoun-Conway/p/book/9780415534710
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Household water insecurity has serious implications for the health, livelihoods and wellbeing of people around the world. Existing methods to assess the state of household water insecurity focus largely on water quality, quantity or adequacy, source or reliability, and affordability. These methods have significant advantages in terms of their simplicity and comparability, but are widely recognized to oversimplify and underestimate the global burden of household water insecurity. In contrast, a broader definition of household water insecurity should include entitlements and human capabilities, socio-cultural dynamics, and political institutions and processes. This paper proposes a mix of qualitative and quantitative methods that can be widely adopted across cultural, geographic, and demographic contexts to assess hard-to-measure dimensions of household water insecurity. In doing so, it critically evaluates existing methods for assessing household water insecurity and suggests ways in which methodological innovations advance a broader definition of household water insecurity.
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Our aim in this paper is not to abandon, but rather reconceptualize, water security in ways that explicitly link to broader social and political relations that enable benefits to water related services (e.g., drinking, recreation, productive uses, cultural practices) rather than focus on the materiality of access to water in and of itself. Our conceptualization of water security draws on Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum’s ‘‘capabilities approach,1” a moral and political philosophical framework that centers on wellbeing, human development, and justice. We envision water security as both grounded in the social relations of access to water as well as critical to a set of relations and functionings that advance human flourishing. As such, we challenge the dominant view of water security that identifies water as a predominantly material object (‘H2O’) that needs to be ‘secured,’ a view that points towards interventions to capture water to alleviate or address situations where it is deficient or scarce. Instead, we reposition water security as a hydrosocial process rather than a static goal or objective.
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In this third progress report I consider the politics of settler colonialism in relation to nonnative people of color. Settler colonialism has become an increasingly important concept over the past decade, and while geographers typically think about it from a white/native perspective, I explore how ethnic studies, specifically, Chicana/o studies, has responded to it. For different reasons both disciplines have hesitated to fully interrogate the significance of the concept. In the case of geography, the whiteness of the discipline has caused it to overlook vibrant debates within ethnic studies. Chicana/o studies has not directly engaged with settler colonialism because, I argue, it has the potential to disrupt core elements of Chicana/o political subjectivity. Specifically, it unsettles Chicanas/os’ conception of themselves as colonized people by highlighting their role as colonizers. Acknowledging such a role is difficult not only because it challenges key dimensions of Chicana/o identity, as seen in Aztlán, Chicanas/os’ mythical homeland, but also because of the precarious nature of Chicana/o indigeneity. Examining Chicana/o studies’ muted response to settler colonialism illustrates the impoverished nature of geography’s study of race.
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We explore the relationship between water security (WS) and adaptive capacity (AC); the two concepts are connected because achieving the first may be dependent on building the second. We focus on how metrics of WS and AC are operationalized and what implications they may have for short- and long-term management. We argue that rather than static conceptualizations of WS and AC, we need to understand what combinations of capacities are needed as a function of how controllable key parameters of WS are and the types of outcomes we seek to achieve. We offer a conceptual model of the relationship between WS and AC to clarify what aspects of human-water interactions each concept emphasizes and suggest a hypothetical example of how decision-makers may use these ideas.
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In this paper we review literature and suggest a framework to examine and measure urban water security as it interacts with urbanization and urban-regional systems. We develop a comprehensive framework to start bridging that gap. In this framework, urban water security is shaped by five interacting social and environmental domains. These are Sociodemographic, Economic, Technological, Ecological, and Governance (SETEG). We suggest a few indicators and aggregation methods that can shed light on the multidimensional and interconnected nature of urban water security, and illuminate different levels of influence among the five SETEG domains. By improving the selection of indicators for the multiple SETEG domains and interactions creating urban water security (or insecurity), combined approaches such as the one outlined above might help move a scattered array of water security goals towards the creation of informed, cohesive and relevant policy interventions.
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Relationality is a persistent concern of socio-spatial theory, increasingly invoked in geographical scholarship. We bring geographical scholarship on relationality to bear on relational poverty studies, an emergent body of work that challenges mainstream approaches to conceptualizing, explaining, researching and acting upon poverty. We argue that relationality scholarship provides ontological, theoretical, and epistemological interventions that extend prior relational poverty work. We synthesize these three elements to develop an explicitly geographical relationality and show how this framework offers a politics of possibility for knowing and acting on poverty in new ways.
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In this report I argue that environmental racism is constituent of racial capitalism. While the environmental justice movement has been a success on many levels, there is compelling evidence that it has not succeeded in actually improving the environments of vulnerable communities. One reason for this is because we are not conceptualizing the problem correctly. I build my argument by first emphasizing the centrality of the production of social difference in creating value. Second, I review how the devaluation of nonwhite bodies has been incorporated into economic processes and advocate for extending such frameworks to include pollution. And lastly, I turn to the state. If, in fact, environmental racism is constituent of racial capitalism, then this suggests that activists and researchers should view the state as a site of contestation, rather than as an ally or neutral force.
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As an essential resource, water has been the object of warfare, political wrangling, and individual and corporate abuse. It has also become an object of commodification, with multinational corporations vying for water supply contracts in many countries. In Precious Commodity, Martin V. Melosi examines water resources in the United States and addresses whether access to water is an inalienable right of citizens, and if government is responsible for its distribution as a public good. Melosi provides historical background on the construction, administration, and adaptability of water supply and wastewater systems in urban America. He cites budgetary constraints and the deterioration of existing water infrastructures as factors leading many municipalities to seriously consider the privatization of their water supply. Melosi also views the role of government in the management of, development of, and legal jurisdiction over America's rivers and waterways for hydroelectric power, flood control, irrigation, and transportation access. Looking to the future, he compares the costs and benefits of public versus private water supply, examining the global movement toward privatization.
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Unreliable water access significantly impairs household health and welfare. While press and policy reports suggest that residents of mobile home communities in the United States experience unreliable water access, scholarly examination of this issue has been lacking. Using data from the 2011 American Housing Survey, we first present descriptive evidence of disparities in water service reliability and then construct a binary logit regression model assessing the correlates of reliable provision. We find that living in a mobile home unit, and especially in a mobile home park, is significantly and negatively correlated with water service reliability. Our findings demonstrate the need for future research to assess the mechanisms of water service reliability within mobile home parks, as well as the relationship between living in a mobile home and other dimensions of household water security.
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This article examines the role of water infrastructure in the production of state power, and advances an understanding of nonhumans as power brokers. While state power is increasingly understood as the effect of material practices and processes, I draw on the idea that objects are ‘force-full’ to argue that infrastructure helped cement federal state power in Tijuana over the twentieth century, and simultaneously limited the spaces of stateness in surprising ways. To support my argument, I examine three sets of water infrastructure in Tijuana, Mexico. First, I examine the key constitutional edicts, laws, and treaties that enabled bureaucratic development and staked territorial claims on water during Mexico’s liberal era (1876–1911) and post-revolutionary period. Second, I trace the development of Tijuana’s flood control and potable water conveyance networks, designed and built between the 1960s and the 1980s, which enabled rapid urban growth but ultimately cultivated dependency on a distant, state engineered water source. Finally, I show how the ordinary infrastructures of water supply—such as barrels, cisterns, and buckets, common tools in Tijuana homes—both coexist with and limit state power, resulting in variegated geographies of institutional authority, punctuated by alternative spaces of rule. Together, these infrastructures form the ‘hydrosocial cycle’ of Tijuana, which I use to illustrate the uneven spatiality of state power. In conclusion, I draw on insights from object-oriented philosophy and science and technology studies to move past the anthropocentric notion of infrastructure as ‘power tools’—handy implements used by humans to exercise dominion—toward tool-power: the idea that objects-in-themselves are wellsprings of power.
Article
This paper rereads debates over water security and insecurity through the tools of critical geographical scholarship. It seeks to demonstrate the value of such a critical perspective in achieving access to water for all. While rejecting a simplistic dismissal of mainstream discourses on water security, the paper notes the failure to adequately politicise the processes and relationships that reproduce water inequalities. Finding lessons in recent writings on political ecology, the hydro-social cycle and on the right to water, the paper concludes with a Gramscian claim to build from the fragmented but situated knowledges implicit in struggles to achieve democratic access to water.
Article
This article aims to improve understanding of the nexus between poverty and homelessness, with a particular focus on families with children. It draws on relational poverty analysis which analyses the processes, structures and social relations which create and sustain poverty. The article is based on a longitudinal and qualitative study of Australian families with children during and after periods of homelessness, which found that the families experienced not only a lack of material resources but also the social and other processes that impoverish, exclude and disempower, including exposure to violence, lack of family and institutional support, and pressure to relinquish children. The participants had a strong social identity as families and actively resisted the marginalization and individuation processes they encountered. The article argues that conceptualizing homelessness as a process of “destitution” can provide a theoretical basis for understanding the relationship between poverty and homelessness which to date remains remarkably unexplored.
Article
This paper presents a comprehensive review of the concept of water security, including both academic and policy literatures. The analysis indicates that the use of the term water security has increased significantly in the past decade, across multiple disciplines. The paper presents a comparison of definitions of, and analytical approaches to, water security across the natural and social sciences, which indicates that distinct, and at times incommensurable, methods and scales of analysis are being used. We consider the advantages and disadvantages of narrow versus broad and integrative framings of water security, and explore their utility with reference to integrated water resources management. In conclusion, we argue that an integrative approach to water security brings issues of good governance to the fore, and thus holds promise as a new approach to water management.
Article
Losses from environmental hazards have escalated in the past decade, prompting a reorientation of emergency management systems away from simple postevent response. There is a noticeable change in policy, with more emphasis on loss reduction through mitigation, preparedness, and recovery programs. Effective mitigation of losses from hazards requires hazard identification, an assessment of all the hazards likely to affect a given place, and risk-reduction measures that are compatible across a multitude of hazards. The degree to which populations are vulnerable to hazards, however, is not solely dependent upon proximity to the source of the threat or the physical nature of the hazard –social factors also play a significant role in determining vulnerability. This paper presents a method for assessing vulnerability in spatial terms using both biophysical and social indicators. A geographic information system was utilized to establish areas of vulnerability based upon twelve environmental threats and eight social characteristics for our study area, Georgetown County, South Carolina. Our results suggest that the most biophysically vulnerable places do not always spatially intersect with the most vulnerable populations. This is an important finding because it reflects the likely ‘social costs’ of hazards on the region. While economic losses might be large in areas of high biophysical risk, the resident population also may have greater safety nets (insurance, additional financial resources) to absorb and recover from the loss quickly. Conversely, it would take only a moderate hazard event to disrupt the well-being of the majority of county residents (who are more socially vulnerable, but perhaps do not reside in the highest areas of biophysical risks) and retard their longer-term recovery from disasters. This paper advances our theoretical and conceptual understanding of the spatial dimensions of vulnerability. It further highlights the merger of conceptualizations of human environment relationships with geographical techniques in understanding contemporary public policy issues.
Article
Previous quantitative research on environmental justice has been limited by simplistic assumptions used to measure health risks and traditional regression techniques that fail to discern spatial variations in statistical relationships. We address these gaps through a case study that examines: (a) whether potential health risks from exposure to hazardous air pollutants in Florida are related to race/ethnicity and socioeconomic status, and (b) how the significance of statistical associations between health risk and race/ethnicity or socioeconomic status vary across the state. This study integrates census tract level estimates of cumulative cancer risk compiled by the EPA with Census 2000 data and a spatial statistical technique known as geographically weighted regression that allows us to explore spatial variability in analytical results. Our findings indicate that while race and ethnicity are significantly related to cancer risks in Florida, conventional regression can hide important local variations in statistical relationships relevant to environmental justice analysis.
Article
New strategies for analyzing water security have the potential to improve coordination and generate synergies between researchers, policy-makers, and practitioners.
Article
What might be the implications for urban studies if we take ‘comparison’ not just as a method, but as a mode of thought that informs how urban theory is constituted? Comparative research is experiencing resurgence in urban studies, yet there has been little effort to critically debate how comparison might take place, particularly in reference to comparison across the global ‘North–South divide’. Existing epistemologies of comparative research have focused on the domains of practicalities, methodologies and typologies. Notwithstanding the value of these debates, this article offers an alternative framing of comparison that focuses attention on theory cultures, learning and ethico-politics, drawing on postcolonial debates. This approach works with an expansive conception of comparison that positions comparison as a strategy. The article concludes by outlining three implications for urban research. Qu’en serait-il des études urbaines si la ‘comparaison’était considérée non pas seulement comme une méthode, mais comme un mode de réflexion qui éclaire la manière dont la théorie urbaine est établie? Les recherches comparatives connaissent une renaissance en études urbaines, mais rares sont les tentatives de débat critique sur les modalités d’une comparaison, notamment au-delà de la division Nord-Sud. Les épistémologies existantes de la recherche comparative se sont attachées à trois domaines: pratique, méthodologique et typologique. Sans nier la valeur de ces analyses, un cadre de comparaison alternatif est proposé ici, inspiré des débats postcoloniaux et axé sur les cultures de la théorie, l’apprentissage et l’éthico-politique. Cette approche obéit à une conception élargie de la comparaison, laquelle est positionnée en tant que stratégie. La conclusion dépeint trois implications pour la recherche urbaine.
Article
Source water protection has gained considerable attention in the water resources literature particularly after several well publicized (non-First Nations) water contamination events in Canada. This short report explores health and place through an examination of access to safe drinking water in a developed country. For First Nations in Canada, safe drinking water remains a serious, albeit under-reported, problem. The incidence of contaminated drinking water is pervasive in many First Nations communities. Attempts to "fix" water quality problems using technology alone have produced only limited success. It will be shown that greater attention to source water protection has potential for both to improve drinking water quality as well as to re-connect health and place for First Nations in Canada.
Article
This study is one of the first to examine the links connecting water insecurity, gender, and emotional distress. The article presents quantitative and qualitative analyses of interview data collected from randomly selected pairs of male and female household heads (n=48) living under the same household-level conditions of water insecurity., The results provide partial confirmation of past findings that women are more likely than men to be burdened with everyday water responsibilities. However, there were no significant differences between men's and women's experiences in household water emergencies (i.e., water shortages and last-ditch attempts to buy water) and reports on some measures of emotional distress (i.e., worry, annoyance, and anger with family members). The results suggest that intrahousehold gender disparities may be mitigated in times of severe water scarcity. The discussion raises questions about the comparability of men's and women's expressions of emotional distress.
Article
Recent research suggests that insecure access to key resources is associated with negative mental health outcomes. Many of these studies focus on drought and famine in agricultural, pastoral, and foraging communities, and indicate that food insecurity mediates the link between water insecurity and emotional distress. The present study is the first to systematically examine intra-community patterns of water insecurity in an urban setting. In 2004-2005, we collected interview data from a random sample of 72 household heads in Villa Israel, a squatter settlement of Cochabamba, Bolivia. We examined the extent to which water-related emotional distress is linked with three dimensions of water insecurity: inadequate water supply; insufficient access to water distribution systems; and dependence on seasonal water sources, and with gender. We found that access to water distribution systems and female gender were significantly associated with emotional distress, while water supply and dependence on seasonal water sources were not. Economic assets, social assets, entitlements to water markets, and entitlements to reciprocal exchanges of water were significantly associated with emotional distress, while entitlements to a common-pool water resource institution were not. These results suggest that water-related emotional distress develops as a byproduct of the social and economic negotiations people employ to gain access to water distribution systems in the absence of clear procedures or established water rights rather than as a result of water scarcity per se.
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