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A social-ecological analysis of drinking water risks in coastal Bangladesh
Abstract
Groundwater resources in deltaic regions are vulnerable to contamination by saline seawater, posing significant crisis for drinking water. Current policy and practice of building water supply infrastructure, without adequate hydrogeological analysis and institutional coordination are failing to provide basic drinking water services for millions of poor people in such difficult hydrogeological contexts. We apply a social-ecological systems approach to examine interdisciplinary data from hydrogeological mapping, a water infrastructure audit, 2103 household surveys, focus group discussions and interviews to evaluate the risks to drinking water security in one of 139 polders in coastal Bangladesh. We find that increasing access through public tubewells is common but insufficient to reduce drinking water risks. In response, there has been a four-fold growth in private investments in shallow tubewells with new technologies and entrepreneurial models to mitigate groundwater salinity. Despite these interventions, poor households in water-stressed environments face significant trade-offs in drinking water quality, accessibility and affordability. We argue that institutional coordination and hydrogeological monitoring at a systems level is necessary to mitigate socio-ecological risks for more equitable and efficient outcomes.
... According to Hoque et al. (2019) and Hoque et al. (2016), the catastrophic shortfall of safe drinking water in deltaic and coastal regions is due to the vulnerability of groundwater to saline seawater contamination. Salinity damages the infrastructure (roads, buildings, and pipelines) by shortening their life spans and raising maintenance costs. ...
... Kayser et al. (2015) cited that human health is at risk due to inappropriate access to safe drinking water, especially in low-and middle-income nations. Economic issues such as unemployment also hinder the procurement of safe drinking water (Hoque et al. 2019). ...
... As shown in Table 3, according to Hoque (2019), To assess the threats to drinking water protection in one of 139 polders in coastal Bangladesh, researchers used a social-ecological systems method to analyze multidisciplinary data derived from hydrogeological mapping, a water infrastructure audit, 2103 household surveys, focus group talks, and interviews. The authors argue that system-level operational cooperation and hydrogeological monitoring are needed to reduce socio-ecological risks and achieve fairer and more productive outcomes. ...
The frequency and severity of natural disasters have increased significantly over the last two decades, and the length of time that the recovery requires is strongly dependent on the resiliency of critical infrastructures, particularly the drinking water and wastewater infrastructures. The goal of this research is to evaluate, analyze, and explore approaches to increase the resilience of water infrastructures. For this purpose, this study identified and investigated the challenges and risks imposed on the drinking and wastewater infrastructure by disasters, then proposed eight practical strategies for improving their resiliency. Eighty-seven articles from the existing literature were reviewed in detail, and 26 challenges and risks were identified and classified into four social, economic, environmental, and organizational categories. The results revealed that the speed and scale of the response needed in the affected communities are the two main organizational challenges, and salinity and vulnerability to flooding and heavy rains are the environmental challenges. Perception of communities and population growth are the social challenges, and low income and insufficient funding are the economic challenges. The results of this study revealed a need for policies that provide sufficient funding for the affected communities. The outcomes of this study will significantly help decision-makers to timely identify the challenges and adopt effective strategies to mitigate the impacts of natural disasters on the drinking water and wastewater infrastructure.
... While technological solutions are available to deal with the salinity crisis, the uncoordinated public and private investments in infrastructure, in absence of data on hydrogeological risks and poverty distribution, are failing to reach the excluded pockets of unserved rural population (S. F. Hoque et al., 2019). Ensuring universal and equitable access to safe and affordable drinking water services, as articulated in SDG 6.1, requires investment decisions to be guided by timely and accurate local level information on aquifer availability and quality, existing water supply infrastructure, and household socio-economic characteristics. ...
... The spatial optimization model used in this article draws on biophysical and socio-economic data from a water infrastructure audit, a household welfare survey, and water quality tests conducted in 2018. Table 1 summarizes these methods, the details of which are described in S. F. Hoque et al. (2019). The datasets can be found in S. F. Hoque et al. (2021) and Salehin et al. (2021). ...
... Analysis of the primary data, as published in S. F. Hoque et al. (2019) and S. F. Hoque and Hope (2020), revealed how spatial variation in groundwater salinity influenced water use behaviors. In the north and central parts of the polder, salinity in the shallow (<90 m) and deep (>90 m) aquifers was usually below 1,000 ppm and increased gradually toward the southern part of the polder where suitable deep aquifers were not found, as shown in Figures 2a and 2b. ...
Achieving water security requires reconciling multiple objectives while prioritizing scarce resources for the provision of safe drinking water supplies. We examine decision-making to invest in drinking water infrastructure in coastal Bangladesh where increasing saline intrusion in aquifers intersects with high levels of poverty for the 20 million people living in the coastal region. Multi-objective optimization is used to explore the trade-offs between two public policy goals: (a) maximizing overall access to improved water supplies (the greater good) and (b) maximizing access for the population with the lowest welfare (the greater need). To elucidate this trade-off, we make use of groundwater salinity measurements, an extensive household survey and an audit of drinking water infrastructure in 1 out of Bangladesh’s 139 polders, which is home to nearly 60,000 people. We quantify the costs of a variety of drinking water supply options including deep tube wells, desalination plants, and piped systems. The recommended solutions are sequences of investments in water supply assets that are optimized to specified locations within the polder. The method is potentially scalable and transferrable to inform investments to achieve the Sustainable Development Goal (Target 6.1) of universal access to safe and affordable drinking water.
... There are increased calls for new methods and empirical evaluations of water affordability over time, with particular focus on understanding the water security challenges of the poor and vulnerable in difficult contexts. We aim to address this knowledge gap using water diary data from households in coastal Bangladesh, where chronic groundwater salinity and idiosyncratic hydroclimatic shocks contest simple notions of affordability for 25 million coastal inhabitants living in similar conditions in South Asia (Hoque et al. 2019). ...
... The baseline data for this water diary study was gathered in 2018 through household surveys, water infrastructure mapping and water quality tests. The methodological details of these exercises are detailed in a recently published paper under the same research grant (refer to Hoque et al. 2019) and summarized in Table 1. Ethical approval for the study was granted from Oxford University's Central University Research Ethics Committee (SOGE 18A-6, November 2017). ...
... Service delivery at the operational level is informal and uncoordinated with limited accountability for the quality of services provided or their affordability. The significant acceleration in self-supply through private investments in shallow tubewells of uncertain water quality is a particular concern given high levels of salinity in the study area and the millions at risk from arsenic nationally (Hoque et al. 2019;Jamil et al. 2019). While drinking water access has risen to the meet the MDGs, there is evidence that the service targets for the SDGs, including affordability, will result in large relative reductions in national progress. ...
Monitoring affordability of drinking water services is constrained by data gaps from traditional approaches that rely on cross-sectional data from infrequent, nationally representative surveys. Estimates of income or expenditure ratios spent on accessing a main source of drinking water are poorly equipped to reflect affordability in rural contexts where poor people often resort to multiple sources of varying costs, quality and distance to cope with unreliable or absent water supplies. Here, we present findings from an 18-week water diary study that documented daily water choices and expenditures of a stratified sample of 120 households in coastal Bangladesh. This intensive, longitudinal monitoring is supported by household surveys, water infrastructure mapping, hydrogeological analysis of salinity, automated rainfall measurements and interviews with diary participants. We identify five water expenditure typologies, ranging from those who always rely on unpaid and often poor-quality sources like shallow tubewells, pond sand filters and rainwater, to those who purchase vended water for drinking and cooking all year-round, spending 3–7% of total household expenditure. These behavioral dynamics are shaped by environmental, infrastructure and cultural factors, with household wealth being a weak indicator of behavior. We conclude that affordability measures should recognize the quality of service available and chosen by users across seasons, rather than being fixated on income or expenditure ratios for a main source. Measuring the latter without considering the former impedes the design of service delivery models appropriate for providing safe and reliable water supplies, at costs that users and society are willing to bear and sustain.
... Moreover, salinity levels in surface and sub-surface waters have increased in manifold during the last three decades Zahid et al., 2018). Therefore, availability of freshwater aquifers in a feasible depth are scarce in these regions (Hoque et al., 2019). ...
... People living in coastal Bangladesh adopted diverse techniques, varies temporally and spatially, to meet their drinking water requirements (Hoque et al., 2019;Islam et al., 2013). In Dacope Upazila (one of the salinity affected coastal sub-district), people principally dependents on rainwater for their drinking water requirements, through rain fed-pond and rainwater harvesting (RWH) in storage tanks (Islam et al., 2013). ...
Salinity intrusion both in surface and groundwater caused a crisis for safe drinking water in coastal Bangladesh. The situation is even worse for children especially at school. However, information on water services in coastal schools is limited. Here we assess the quality of drinking water and supply infrastructures in the primary schools of a severely saline affected coastal area of Bangladesh. To fulfill the objective, thirty-eight schools were purposively selected and investigated in Dacope Upazila of Khulna district in Bangladesh. Findings revealed that harvested rainwater (63%) and pond (21%) are the major drinking water sources where countries’ leading water supply technology, tube well (16%) were the least used option. Moreover, salinity in all the tube wells exceeded the national standard. DO, pH, NO3, SO4 and PO4 concentration of all options satisfied national standards. However, total coliform counts exceeded the national standard. More than half of the samples had a low to high risk of indicator bacteria which is a major public health concern. Although 29% schools have installed portable water filtration units, those are grossly inaccessible for the students. Hence, students are reportedly consuming unsafe drinking water, and thus are vulnerable to water-borne diseases. The lack of resources and poorly designed infrastructure are the principal challenges to the safe drinking water supply. Therefore, disinfection at the point of use along with proper maintenance of the water infrastructure is urgent needs to safeguard potable water services in the primary schools of coastal Bangladesh.
... However, out of 19 coastal districts, the most southwestern five coastal districts, i.e., Satkhira, Khulna, Bagerhat, Pirojpur, and Barguna, have been identified as the hard-to-reach areas [7]. People in these districts have been exposed to different types of water security risks, particularly groundwater laced with salinity and toxins, which is not suitable for human consumption [11,12]. Previous studies have consistently reported higher salinity, as well as considerable trace and toxic elements in the groundwater samples from this area [13][14][15][16][17][18][19]. ...
... More than 80% of the people of Southkhali Union are unable to use groundwater due to high salinity and are thus dependent on other alternatives [10]. Recent studies have reported widespread drinking water insecurity scenarios of southwest coastal Bangladesh [11,25,[33][34][35][36]. However, comprehensive assessment in the context of water insecurity and water services in Southkhali Union is not available. ...
Substantial progress has been seen in the drinking water supply as per the Millennium Development Goals (MDG), but achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), particularly SGD 6.1 regarding safely managed drinking water with much more stringent targets, is considered as a development challenge. The problem is more acute in low-income water-scarce hard-to-reach areas such as the southwest coastal region of Bangladesh, where complex hydrogeological conditions and adverse water quality contribute to a highly vulnerable and insecure water environment. Following the background, this study investigated the challenges and potential solutions to drinking water insecurity in a water-scarce area of southwest coastal Bangladesh using a mixed-methods approach. The findings revealed that water insecurity arises from unimproved, deteriorated, unaffordable, and unreliable sources that have significant time and distance burdens. High rates of technical dysfunction of the existing water infrastructure contribute to water insecurity as well. Consequently, safely managed water services are accessible to only 12% of the population, whereas 64% of the population does not have basic water. To reach the SDG 6.1 target, this underserved community needs well-functioning readily accessible water infrastructure with formal institutional arrangement rather than self-governance, which seems unsuccessful in this low-income context. This study will help the government and its development partners in implementing SDG action plans around investments to a reliable supply of safe water to the people living in water-scarce hard-to-reach coastal areas.
... Therefore, availability of freshwater aquifers in a feasible depth are scarce in these regions (Hoque et al., 2019). ...
... People living in coastal Bangladesh adopted diverse techniques, varies temporally and spatially, to meet their drinking water requirements (Hoque et al., 2019;Islam et al., 2013). In Dacope Upazila (one of the salinity affected coastal sub-district), people principally dependents on rainwater for their drinking water requirements, through rain fed-pond and rainwater harvesting (RWH) in storage tanks (Islam et al., 2013). ...
... Evidence from Kenya shows that after rainfall events, users shift from handpumps and kiosks to unimproved free sources, resulting in decreased revenues and poor maintenance of waterpoints (Foster & Hope, 2017, 2016. Similarly, in coastal Bangladesh, Hoque et al. (2019) found that households' reluctance to pay monthly subscription fees for bottled water delivery during the rainy season ultimately led to the cessation of the local government-led vending system due to lack of funds for vehicle maintenance. Rural households often reserve the higher quality bottled water for drinking purposes only, using other sources for washing and bathing. ...
... In addressing these questions, the paper studies small, private WSPs in Khulna district of coastal Bangladesh -a region characterized by high spatial heterogeneity in aquifer availability and groundwater salinity, coupled with insufficient and uncoordinated water infrastructure development, that have resulted in chronic drinking water stress for more than 8 million people living across 139 polders or embanked islands (Hoque et al., 2019). New evidence is presented on the previously undocumented growth of private desalination plants and distributing vendors, first, by situating them within the uncoordinated investments by government, donors and individual households, and second, by linking them with household water choices and payment behaviour. ...
Small water service providers operating in informal markets across the Global South address critical gaps in public investments in the rural water sector. This study analyses the growth and operations of private desalination plants and distributing vendors in Khulna, Bangladesh, within the broader landscape of uncoordinated investments by government, donors and households. Household water choices and payment behaviour vary spatially and seasonally, with observable wealth differences in self-supply investments in rainwater tanks and tubewells. Monitoring and regulating informal private providers can improve sectoral coordination, increase efficiency of service delivery and unlock commercial finances against the backdrop of declining aid-based financing.
... While both groups encountered health complications, sufferings for women were more worse due to working in floodwater, poor hygiene, and the dearth of awareness. This observation is also supported by Hoque and others [63], who have shown that in coastal Bangladesh, disadvantaged groups, in particular women and children, experience psychological and physical health problems unequally because of salinity intrusion and coastal flooding. Beyond health complications, our study also found that sanitation problems were severe among both women and men. ...
... Few other groundwaterbased options, such as piped distribution systems, vended water supply systems and desalination plants, such as reverse osmosis and managed aquifer recharge (MAR), have been introduced but, so far, to a limited extent [20,31,33,38,44,45]. The usefulness, efficiency, and sustainability of these options are context-specific and have been linked to technical (i.e., the geophysical and hydrogeological conditions as well as the availability and quality of water), socioeconomic (distance to water sources or access) and institutional (monitoring and financial management system) factors [20,21,31,38,45], which have manifested in differential impacts on different dimensions of safely managed drinking water sources, including safety, access, reliability and affordability [29]. ...
Transitioning from the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) is a big challenge, particularly for SDG 6.1, as the effective delivery of drinking water services drops due to more stringent indicators, especially for water quality constraints. Salinity in groundwater has received less attention compared to arsenic and E. Coli in the MDG era, while its presence and widespread variability has considerable implications in larger coastal areas for achieving SDG 6.1 targets. This article analyzes drinking water security in southwest coastal Bangladesh, through an in-depth field investigation. It reveals that the exponential growth of groundwater-based technologies, such as tube wells, does not necessarily indicate the actual safe drinking water coverage in coastal areas, due to complex hydrogeology with the high spatial variability of groundwater salinity risks. The spatial variability of hydrogeologic constraints and groundwater salinity risks also reinforces concerns of access, reliability, and affordability with different water supply technologies. National estimates can be misleading as the presence of salinity substantially lowers the effective drinking water coverage. Infrastructural investments for drinking water supply need to consider a sound knowledge of hydrogeologic heterogeneity, and the monitoring of water quality, if the SDG 6.1 targets are to be met.
... The context of healthy living is not a priority in the fulfillment of women's basic rights (Roaf, de Albuquerque and Heller, 2018). It is evident from the low access to clean water, which has not been used optimally by women on the coast (Hoque et al., 2019). Previous studies revealed that their involvement as a gender aspect is very important for the success of sanitation programs, the formation of better culture, and community participation (Mova et al., 2019). ...
Previous findings showed that there are only a few studies on the core problem of environmental sanitation in coastal areas. The study Mawar and Wahidah (2018), the coastal community of Percut Sei Tuan only uses 20% clean water, does not have a latrine 42.9%, and does not have a SPAL of 46.7%. Therefore, this study aims to examine the cultural, gender, and stakeholder aspects of community-based sanitation management (CBSM). A cross-sectional design was used, and the sample population consists of family heads in the Percut Sei Tuan Sub-district. The sample size was calculated using a category survey formula of 414 households from the population. The samples were selected using a simple random sampling technique, and a questionnaire instrument, which was tested for its validity and reliability was used for data collection. The data were then analyzed using CFA (Confirmatory Factor Analysis) to assess the factors that influence CBSM. The results showed that gender roles have a significant effect on environmental sanitation management in coastal areas with a P0.001, and culture has a significant effect on CBSM with a P0.001. However, the role of stakeholders was insignificant in this study. CBSM in coastal areas was still very low in terms of participation in planning, implementation, and utilization. The involvement of women as an aspect of gender in the formation of a disciplined culture in sanitation management is very necessary to mobilize family members.
... However, different coastal hazards and disasters continue to have devastating effects on infrastructure systems (Bostick et al., 2017). While past disaster experiences did contribute to coping capacities, poor infrastructural condition, lack of maintenance of coastal roads and embankments, salinity intrusion and crisis of drinking water, poverty and health problems still remain as constant combating issues for the coastal people (Rahman and Rahman, 2015a;Hoque et al., 2019;Mallick et al., 2011). Scholars argued that disaster associated problems and risk management have not yet been sufficiently focused on coastal resilience, with community stakeholders' involvement (Bostick et al., 2017). ...
The southwestern coastal part of Bangladesh is highly vulnerable to different kinds of disasters due to the changing climatic conditions. With the lenses of rural communities here an approach to examine how were the different disasters experiences, what lesson they learnt and what are their present disaster associated problems and stakeholder’s networks they rely on to enhance their resilience. Qualitative data were collected through participatory rapid rural appraisal (100–150 persons), field observation, 12 focus group discussions (25–40 people/FGD), and key informant interviews (25 people) in four southwestern coastal districts and nine coastal villages of Bangladesh. Results showed that since long back to date drinking water crisis, poor roads, poverty, poor sanitation, and health problems are the main identified disaster-associated problems. After learning lessons from previous disaster experiences, the community people have improved and changed their practices mainly by storing emergency foods, house construction, and increasing disaster awareness. However, the coastal communities are combating with the problems that have both direct and indirect association with poor infrastructures. Therefore, the coastal communities urge and sketched for a better stakeholders’ supports and networks to minimize their problems and thus to enhance communities’ disaster resilience.
... Use of multiple water sources is one coping mechanism to increase water security, particularly to increase the quantity of water. However, it is also used to address water quality preferences (Nowicki et al., 2020) and to increase convenience and affordability (Hoque et al., 2019). There is no (inter)disciplinary agreement on what an acceptable (or tolerable) intermittent water supply is. ...
Despite worldwide advances in urban water security, equitable access to safely managed drinking water remains a challenge in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Piped water on premises is widely considered the gold standard for drinking water provision and is expanding rapidly in small and medium urban centres in LMICs. However, intermittency in urban water supply can lead to unreliability and water quality issues, posing a key barrier to equitable water security. Leveraging mixed methods and multiple data sets, this study investigates to what extent urban water security is equitable in a small town in Northern Ethiopia with almost uniform access to piped water services. We demonstrate that, despite widespread access to piped water on premises, there is considerable heterogeneity in household water insecurity. Development of a household water insecurity index considering issues of quality, quantity, and reliability, demonstrated high spatial variability in water security between households connected to the piped water system. Reliability of piped water supply did not equate to high water security in every case, as accessibility of appropriate alternative supplies and storage mediated water security. Urban water planning in LMICs must go beyond the physical expansion of household water connections to consider the implications of spatiality, intermittency of supply, and gendered socio-economic vulnerability to deliver equitable urban water security.
... Peri-urban water security is seen as being shaped by the twin processes of climate change and urbanization (Kumar et al., 2011a). Several studies are available on water security or other issues related to water for local areas of Bangladesh (Benneyworth et al., 2016;Datta et al., 2020;De Silva & Leder, 2017;Hoque et al., 2019;Tauhid Ur Rahman et al., 2017), or for urban areas (Datta et al., 2020;Ismail, 2016;Yasmin et al., 2018), but the study on water security for peri-urban areas is not available. Some of the studies were conducted on Manikganj Upazila regarding land-use change and urbanization (Sayed & Haruyama, 2015 and some of the water-related issues like Arsenic contamination (Akter et al., 2015), where a few studies are available on different issues of groundwater, e.g., arsenic and manganese problem, hydrogeological characteristics, etc. (Halim et al., 2014;Okoh et al., 2019). ...
Water is one of the most important natural resources, which is essential to ensure a sustainable life on the planet. Water security for everyone is a prerequisite for an area’s economic growth, social stability, and environmental sustainability. The peri-urban area is a transition zone with water insecurity in a severe manner. This study has assessed the condition of water security of six unions with peri-urban characteristics of Singair Upazila of Manikganj District of Bangladesh through conducting a total of 182 household surveys, 6 Focus Group Discussions, and 12 Key Informant Interviews. Singair Upazila has experienced mixed land use, industrial growth, infrastructural development, and transformation of economic activities. Here, water security is derived not only from the availability and accessibility of water sources, but also socioeconomic factors. Water security index has been calculated by aggregating the considered values of associated indicators and sub-indicators. Obtained water security index varies from dissatisfaction to highly satisfaction on a scale of 1 to 5. The results show that Saista scored the lowest and marked dissatisfaction among the six unions, while Jamsha scored highest with the highly satisfactory water security status. The study opts to mention that cooperation and partnership development among significant stakeholders, i.e., local people, policymakers, and non-government organizations, can enhance the water security systems in similar peri-urban settings.
... Many WASH professionals (e.g. Eichelberger 2010; Gero et al. 2014;Hoque et al. 2019;Anthonj et al. 2020) have documented major differences in access to resources for vulnerable populations that have impacted their ability to get water and sanitation services, and factors such as mental and physical health are known to be related to water security (Smiley & Stoler 2020). With over a million people in the United States who do not yet have access to water and sanitation, many of which are in historically marginalized and vulnerable communities (Riggs et al. 2017), all practitioners must prioritize the development of specific approaches to achieve access to WASH for vulnerable households. ...
Mid-tech water and sanitation infrastructure – interventions that make moderate use of resources, materials, and technology while providing improvements in health and well-being – may serve an important intermediate role for communities that cannot immediately get high-tech piped infrastructure. However, such systems must be socially appropriate, technically functional, and sustainable. We determined the combinations of technical and social conditions that contribute to the success of household, mid-tech water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) systems using qualitative comparative analysis (QCA). We collected data on 32 household mid-tech Portable Alternative Sanitation Systems (PASS) installed in remote, rural Alaskan communities for 1 year. We then coded qualitative and quantitative data for each household ‘case’ into fuzzy-set values for four technical conditions and four social conditions. We conducted fuzzy-set QCA analyses to determine combinations of conditions (pathways) that led to the successful function and use of PASS. We identified multiple pathways for the success of PASS units, requiring combinations of technical and social conditions. Our analysis reveals that the successful implementation of household mid-tech WASH infrastructure is complicated. We recommend that deliberate steps be taken to engage homeowners, provide appropriate training and support, determine ownership parameters, and ensure the technical sufficiency of mid-tech systems before they are deployed. HIGHLIGHTS
Mid-tech water and sanitation infrastructure can be an alternative option for households where piped infrastructure is infeasible.;
Household mid-tech systems require both social and technical considerations to ensure that systems operate correctly and stay in use.;
There are multiple pathways to success that can vary if homes have multiple vulnerability factors.;
... An emerging body of literature has focused on self-supply in urban and rural sub-Saharan Africa [1][2][3][4] ; however, the phenomenon has remained relatively unexamined in Asia and the Pacific. This is despite evidence that private water sources are common in some countries throughout the region [5][6][7][8][9][10][11] . The potential extent of household self-supply in LMICs in the Asia-Pacific could be substantial-while 93% of households used an improved drinking water source in 2017, only 37% used a piped source 12 . ...
There is increasing awareness of household self-supply and the role it can play in securing water for domestic needs in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), but its scale across the Asia-Pacific has not previously been quantified. This study analysed 77 datasets from 26 countries to estimate the prevalence of self-supplied drinking water, and its associated trends in LMICs in South Asia, Southeast Asia and the Pacific. When factoring in temporal trends, results suggest that >760 million people—or 31% of the population—relied on self-supply for their drinking water in these regions in 2018, with the number of users increasing by >9 million each year. Reliance on self-supply for drinking water is greater in rural areas than in urban areas (37% of rural population vs 20% of urban population), though results vary considerably between countries. Groundwater sources constitute the most common form of self-supply in South Asia and Southeast Asia, while rainwater collection is dominant in the Pacific. The results confirm the significance of self-supply in the Asia-Pacific and suggest that households are a major but often overlooked source of financing within the water sector. The findings raise important questions about how policy and practice should respond to this widespread phenomenon.
... Nevertheless, the presence of a well-maintained and operated RO system could be an alternative to MAR. Pipeline systems which distribute good quality groundwater to nearby areas are another alternative drinking water option being increasingly invested in (Hoque et al. 2019). These systems are generally well accepted by the local population (Inauen et al. 2013). ...
In southwestern Bangladesh, clean drinking water is scarce, since rainwater is only available during the monsoon, pond water is often bacteriologically polluted, and groundwater may exhibit high salinity and arsenic levels. Managed aquifer recharge (MAR) might potentially provide safe drinking water by storing abundant freshwater from the wet season in aquifers for year-round use. Regional potential for MAR was determined by combining assessments of (1) social necessity for MAR by mapping areas with insufficient drinking water of acceptable quality; (2) regional technical suitability by determining the (a) impact of density-driven flow on freshwater recovery efficiency, and (b) vulnerability of recovered water to mixing with contaminated groundwater. These assessments were based on the largest groundwater quality dataset compiled to date in southwestern Bangladesh, which contains 3,716 salinity and 827 arsenic measurements. The results show there is some mismatch between social necessity and technical suitability. In some northern areas, necessity is low because good quality groundwater is present and hence, despite the high technical suitability, potential for MAR is reduced. In other northern areas, groundwater with unsafe arsenic levels or brackish groundwater is likely used for drinking. There, MAR is a technically suitable and safer option. In southern areas, where saline groundwater is widespread and people consume bacterially unsafe pond water, the high groundwater salinity calls for careful evaluation of MAR design, for which this study presents practical guidelines. The approach developed may be useful for mapping MAR potential based on social necessity and technical suitability in other saline deltas worldwide.
... However, the tubewells are becoming increasingly unsuccessful in coastal areas of Bangladesh. Pond sand filters, introduced as an alternative to arsenic contaminated tubewells, have also regularly failed (Hoque et al. 2019). In the coastal region, issues are compounded by frequent cyclones. ...
Groundwater resources are often the main source of drinking water for remote communities, but they are increasingly found to be unsuitable, and a source of ill health in many parts of the world. High annual rainfall in monsoonal regions makes rainwater harvesting an attractive alternative, but lack of infrastructure for capturing and storing sufficient quantities is often restrictive. This study focuses on the coastal region of Bangladesh where groundwater supplying tubewells are progressively found to contain arsenic and high salinity, and where cyclones are a common cause of damage to infrastructure. The aim of this study is to evaluate the potential of a village scale rainwater harvesting scheme as a solution to water security concerns. Analysis of various size rainwater storage systems (RSS) is conducted using daily rainfall data from Khulna Station in Bangladesh. It was found that a village scale RSS with 3 m deep and 100 m by 100 m surface area could supply 100 L/p/d for 85% of the year. The reliability could feasibly be increased to 100% with seasonal water restrictions. The village scale RSS is compared with an individual household level RSS. Advantages of the village scale RSS include the opportunity for improved management and water quality monitoring, and the potential for public-private partnerships. The proposed methodology can be adapted to other monsoonal delta regions to enhance water supply.
... An earlier study has found that wealthier households were more likely to purchase filtered vended water, while poorer households used pond-sand filters and relatively saline shallow tube-wells in the coastal areas of Bangladesh. 41 Although the present study focused on the relationship between drinking water salinity and hypertension, dietary salt intake may also correlate with hypertension, as evidence regarding this relationship is scarce in Bangladesh. A study estimated that the average dietary-sourced salt intake was 9.00 g/day in Bangladesh. ...
Aims
This study aims to explore the association between drinking water salinity and hypertension in three coastal sub-districts of Bangladesh.
Methods
The study uses complete data on 6,296 individuals extracted from the latest Bangladesh Poverty and Groundwater Salinity Survey and a mixed-effects logistic regression model as the analytical tool.
Results
Mixed-effects logistic regression analysis shows a significant association of medium or higher-level salinity with hypertension (adjusted odds ratio 1.650, 95% confidence interval 1.101‒2.473). Other variables significantly associated with hypertension are age, sex, education status, water source, and geographical location. A sizable proportion of the total individual-level variance in the probability of being hypertensive was at household-level (20%) and cluster-level (8%).
Conclusion
The findings from this study suggest that greater salinity in potable water common in coastal areas in Bangladesh is associated with increased risk of hypertension. The study refrains from asserting causality but seeks to stimulate public health and policy interventions to address the increased risk.
... Metals contamination is a serious environmental issue in aquatic ecosystems profoundly influencing the marine ecosystem (Chand et al., 2011). These toxic metals can find their way into the coastal areas via natural process (biogenic) and/or through numerous anthropogenic activities such as use of antifouling paints in shipping industry, domestic and industrial wastewater effluents discharges, smelting, burning of fossil fuels as well as the extensive use of fertilizer, weedicides and pesticides (Masindi and Muedi, traffic, port services, and bilge and ballast water disposals related to port services (Gupta et al., 2009;Hoque et al., 2019). ...
The coastal area of Suva, Fiji is exposed to high degree of metals input from different sources such as land-based industrial activities like metal fabrication and construction, paint manufacturing, petroleum storage and garment manufacturing, food processing and fish cannery as well as activities of bottling plants. It is therefore essential to have continuous monitoring and environmental management for the coastal area. Thus, to assess the degree of contamination of metals, selected metals (Cd, Zn, Pb, Cu and Ni) concentrations were analysed in seawater and sediment samples collected from ten sites in the coastal area of Suva, Fiji. The concentration of these metals in the samples was analysed using flame atomic absorption spectrometer (FAAS). The concentrations of the metal in seawater were in the range: 0.23–0.80 mg/L, 0.08–1.45 mg/L, 0.15–0.25 mg/L, 0.88–1.77 mg/L and 0.88–10.29 mg/L for Ni, Zn, Cd, Pb and Cu, respectively. The corresponding concentrations of metal in the sediment samples in dry weight (dw) basis for Ni, Zn, Cd, Pb and Cu were in the range: 17.24–28.74 mg/kg, 18.55–68.78 mg/kg, 5.49–9.16 mg/kg, 116.96–233.92 mg/kg and 78.43–490.18 mg/kg, respectively. The quality of the seawater was evaluated with respect to WHO established guidelines while the quality of the sediments evaluated using internationally accepted Sediment Quality Guidelines (SQGs). The contamination of the sediments was also assessed in terms of geo-accumulation index (Igeo), contamination factor (Cf) as well as pollution load index (PLI). Zn complied with the guidelines in all ten sites, Cu in eight sites was within the guidelines while Ni complied with the guideline in six sites. However, the levels of contamination recorded for Cd and Pb in all ten sites did not comply with the guidelines.
... Sustainable land management plans could ensure the constant provision of ecosystem services. Studies have showed that the effects of LU/LC on ecosystem services differ temporally and spatially [22,[30][31][32][33]. Water supply services are susceptible since they are exposed to severe natural stresses related to interactions among biophysical factors, which considerably increase their heterogeneity from a temporal and spatial perspective [34,35]. Several relatively static influences (soil, topography, and geology) and dynamic influences (land use, land management, and climate) interact to control water access and how it will be distributed to competing users [23]. ...
Land-use/land-cover changes are considered the dominant form of anthropogenic pressure on the environment, causing changes in ecosystem service patterns and affecting water supply services. Using the spatial econometric technique, we analysed the impact of land-use/land-cover change on water ecosystem services for domestic use upstream and downstream of the Wami River Basin. The results in terms of land-use/land-cover classes during the study period (2011–2016) indicate that cultivated land showed maximum positive changes in both sub-catchments, while bushland and woodland showed maximum negative changes upstream and downstream. The results showed that bushland, woodland, cultivated land, and grassland were significantly correlated with water point characteristics in both sub-catchments. For functionality characteristics, a significant effect was observed in bushland and grassland upstream and downstream, respectively, while sufficient water was found in woodland upstream and grassland downstream. Moreover, bushland was observed to have a significant number of water points with poor quality of water upstream, and a substantial number of water points with good quality of water were found in grassland downstream. We found that all measured land-use/land-cover changes and water point characteristic correlations were statistically significant; therefore, we concluded that land-use/land-cover change affects the water ecosystem in the basin. These results could facilitate decision-making and development of related policies and might support finding sustainable strategies for water ecosystem services for domestic use.
... The proliferation of private wells and boreholes for domestic water consumption in cities raises important questions for the stewardship of groundwater resources by urban households, and the influence of science or state actors on the actions of these households, particularly in circumstances where the levels of understanding of groundwater resources, of both state officials and the public, may be low (Hoque et al, 2019;Lopez-Maldonado et al, 2017;Rajeevan and Mishra, 2019). Academic research into the stewardship behaviour of private well owners, and the factors that influence this, remains limited and tends to focus on rural areas and the global north (Gholson et al, 2018;Kreutzwiser et al, 2011;Ternes, 2019). ...
The rapid development of groundwater systems as part of urban water supplies around the globe is raising critical questions regarding the sustainable management of this essential resource. Yet, in many major cities, the absence of an effective policy regime means that the practice of groundwater exploitation is driven by the actions of domestic households and drilling contractors. Understanding what shapes the decisions and practices of these actors, their understandings of the groundwater resource and the extent to which scientific knowledge shapes this understanding, is an area of critical importance that is currently under-researched. Using a mixed-methods methodology, the paper explores domestic practices of groundwater abstraction in Lagos, Nigeria. It finds that there is a disjuncture between the households who are actively shaping exploitation of the groundwater resource on a day-to-day basis and science and state actors. This disjuncture results in household decisions that are influenced by commonly held, but potentially outdated, perceptions of the groundwater resource rather than scientific evidence or policy instruments. The unseen nature of groundwater resources effectively renders the scale of changing groundwater conditions invisible to households and the state, adding to the challenge of influencing practice. Addressing this disjuncture requires not just more scientific knowledge, but also the active construction of interfaces with, and between, non-state actors through which knowledge can be confronted, discussed and shared.
... All rights reserved. social aspects of water sources, in addition to the environmental conditions, to ensure the feasibility and sustainability of proposed solutions to overcoming the water insecurity issues of the coastal communities ( Hoque et al. 2016;Hoque et al. 2019;Peters et al. 2019). ...
In the polder region of coastal Bangladesh shallow groundwater is primarily brackish with unpredictable occurrence of freshwater pockets. Delta building processes, including the codeposition of fresh‐to‐saline porewater and sediments, have formed the shallow aquifer. Impermeable clay facies and the lack of a topographical gradient limit the flow of groundwater and its mixing with surface water so controls on spatial variability of salinity are not obvious. By characterizing groundwater‐surface water (GW‐SW) interactions, this study attempted to identify areas of potable groundwater for the polder communities. We used transects of piezometers, cores, electromagnetic induction, and water chemistry surveys to explore two sources of potential fresh groundwater: (1) tidal channel‐aquifer exchange and (2) meteoric recharge. Fresh groundwater proved difficult to find due to heterogeneous subsurface lithology, asymmetrical tidal dynamics, extreme seasonal fluctuations in rainfall, and limited field data. Geophysical observations suggest substantial lateral variability in shallow subsurface conductivity profiles. Piezometers show varying degrees of tidal pressure attenuation away from the channels. Nevertheless, the active exchange of freshwater appears to be limited due to low permeability of banks and surface sediments. Results indicate that pockets of fresh groundwater cannot be identified using readily available hydrogeological methods, so alternative drinking water sources should be pursued. By better understanding the hydrogeology of the system, however, communities will be better equipped to redirect water management resources to more feasible and sustainable drinking water options. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
Water is a basic necessity of life, so in order for human beings to be free and safe from various diseases, it is necessary to take necessary measures to provide clean water to them. Lack of access to clean water in Afghanistan is a matter of serious concern. Two decades ago, when Afghanistan was facing a major crisis, 80% of the population used drains, canals and other stagnant water, which led to various diseases. Then, after the American presence in Afghanistan, a new government was formed. In 2001, the Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and Development (MRRD) launched a program called RU-WatSip to improve access to clean water in rural areas. Implement clean water supply programs and projects, which have hit every village in Afghanistan, a decade later, according to a UNICEF survey, 67% of the population in Afghanistan had access to clean water. Which were pollution-free, whereas in the early stages only 20% of Afghanistan’s population had access to clean water. [1]
The Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and Development (MRRD) has implemented various clean water supply projects in different rural areas, although the basic needs of the people have been met with the implementation of these projects. The projects that should have been considered were not implemented as they should have been, and these projects had different hurdles and risks from the design stage to the implementation and handover process, which divided us into three categories: High, medium, and low, for example, briefly mentioned, and our purpose in writing this article is to explore the barriers and difficulties in drinking water supply projects. [2]
We conducted a systematic review of the literature applying Elinor Ostrom’s social-ecological systems framework (SESF), with a focus on studies using quantitative methodologies. We synthesized the step-by-step methodological decisions made across 51 studies into a methodological guide and decision tree for future applications of the framework. A synthesis of trends within each methodological step is provided in detail. Our descriptive summary is followed by a critical discussion of how this heterogeneity can lead to ambiguity in the interpretation of findings and hinder synthesis work. These critical reflections are supported by a survey of 22 scholars, each having been a co-author on at least one of the articles reviewed in this study, on the methodological challenges for applying the framework going forward.
The paper studies the results of social and hygienic monitoring of drinking water from centralized water supply systems carried out in the Primorsky Krai, in comparison with Russian indicators according to state reports. Attention is paid to the state of sanitary protection zones, a comparative characteristic of underground and surface sources of drinking water is given in terms of sanitary and epidemiological well-being. There is a decrease in the proportion of samples in the Primorsky Krai that are unsatisfactory in sanitary and epidemiological terms, due to the elimination of water sources that do not have sanitary protection zones along the region. In terms of sanitary and chemical indicators, the proportion of detected unsatisfactory samples taken from underground sources is higher than that of samples taken from surface sources. There is a lag in the provision of high-quality drinking water to the rural population compared to the urban population, and this gap is predicted to increase due to migration outflow to the urban environment and the postponement of the reconstruction of water supply systems. The leading role of surface sources in providing water supply to the largest number of the population of Primorsky Krai, the laboriousness of water treatment and transportation of water against the background of a reduction in the number of sources and centralization of water supply around more productive water sources are noted. The frequency of non-standard samples of drinking water in terms of microbiological indicators is included in the list of primary factors affecting the sanitary and epidemiological well-being of the region. In the Primorsky Krai, hydrogeochemical provinces were identified according to the increased content of manganese in the water and the physiological inferiority of drinking water. The importance of assessing the quality of drinking water, which has a significant impact on the formation of public health, is emphasized.
Despite the growing emphasis and global initiatives to ensure safe drinking water and sanitation for all (Sustainable Development Goal 6), households in coastal areas are at risk of growing water stress across the globe. However, little is known about households' adaptation strategies to water stress in coastal areas. This study explores the determinants and impacts of adaptation strategies to household-level water stress (both drinking and non-drinking), considering the behaviors of adopters and non-adopters in the southwestern coastal area of Bangladesh. We applied an endogenous switching regression model by analyzing questionnaire survey datasets (n=502) to estimate the effect of adopting adaptation strategies on household-level water stress in four saline-prone coastal sub-districts of Bangladesh. Results reveal six commonly-practiced adaptation strategies: reducing vegetable production, reducing livestock production, paying more to access water, increasing time for water collection, preserving water, and using reservoirs to collect water. Determinants such as migration, support from government and non-government agencies, age, gender, literacy, occupation, income, access to tube wells, and distance from drinking water sources play a significant role in adopting adaptation strategies. Results from the endogenous switching regression model denote that adopting all six adaptation strategies appears to significantly reduce household-level water stress. Through counter-factual analysis, results demonstrate that, on average, households that did not adopt adaptation strategies would have encountered less water stress if they had. Therefore, determinants that stimulate adaptation strategies will indirectly reduce household water stress.
HIGHLIGHTS
Six distinct adaptation strategies are identified to withstand water stress.;
Different socioeconomic determinants and migration significantly affected the adoption of the adaptation strategies.;
Endogenous Switching Regression Model is applied.;
Counter-factual analysis presents the difference in treatment effects between adopters and non-adopters of six adaptation strategies.;
The most alarming part of inorganic arsenic contamination is its silent killing ability which has an adverse impact on human society. Anthropogenic activities trigger threat from bio-physical to social vulnerability. The Ganga-Meghna-Brahmaputra (GMB) basin has been the worst sufferer for the last four decades. This review paper tries to focus on the impacts and consequences of arsenic calamity, assessment of the risk through Geographical Information System (GIS) and a feasible way-out involving rain water harvesting (RWH) with special reference to India. Arsenic poisoning creates a huge burden for rural people. Identification of various dimensions of arsenic coverage has been a difficult task which made GIS an important tool for the assessment of social vulnerability. However, the rural Indian mass is yet to become fully aware of the severity of the arsenic-related risk. They are still consuming the poison through drinking water for the last four decades without even knowing the treatment protocols. RWH is one of the easy way-outs to combat the situation of the arsenic risk, especially for the poor socio-economic rural households. Thus, to prevent further damages, awareness creation, proper medical care with due endeavours from national and international levels are required.
Women in Bangladesh are highly exposed to the effects of climate change. Bangladesh is a cyclone and flood prone area; where coastal women are deprived of access to resources (e.g. information, knowledge and education). Women’s vulnerabilities are further exacerbated by socio-cultural and religious factors that lead to a lack of communication with outside actors. The contribution of women to climate change adaptation has been largely ignored across all levels of society, by members within the family, community, policymakers and beyond; thus, women’s capacity for adaptation is heavily constrained. This thesis reports a mixed method study in the coastal village of Gabura Union under Shyamnagar upazila of Satkhira district in Bangladesh; an area that is at risk of frequent severe cyclones. For example, Aila in 2009 and Sidr in 2007 have ongoing impacts on communities, such as soil salinity because of prolonged period of seawater inundation. This study explores women’s adaptation to climate change through analysis of empirical data under several theoretical threads: the role of local knowledge, the contribution of types of social capital and the significance of place attachment in understanding of women’s place-based adaptation. The thesis firstly highlights the ways women develop livelihood capacities by engaging with aid agencies and developing innovative adaptation strategies based on their local knowledge and social relationships, in the absence of their male community members. Secondly, among the three most commonly identified forms of social capital (e.g. bonding, bridging and linking); bonding capitals are found to be loosened after a major catastrophe due to male community members’ out migration. Over time, developing linking social capital with NGOs helps strengthen bridging social capitals with other community women through development of novel livelihood responses. A third area of the thesis highlights the role of place and how women’s attachment to place helped enhance their adaptation responses by making use of a range of livelihood capitals. Overall, the findings support calls to reconsider the role of women in adaptation to climate change and provide recommendations for considering the intersection of gender and climate change adaptation. In this regard, the thesis establishes the importance of strengthening and broadening linking social capital to develop more gender inclusive adaptation responses (e.g. to ensure women and men can participate in climate change programs equally) to develop tailored adaptation action in a post-disaster context.
Desalination is the technology to provide energy, fresh water, and food security concurrently for the remote, coastal, and energy-lacking countries. In this chapter, we have discussed various techniques and problems of thermal and membrane desalination techniques such as electrodialysis, reverse osmosis, ultrafiltration, and nanofiltration, membrane distillation, and various integrated methods. However, these methods are expensive and energy-intensive, with massive carbon-footprints, and have a serious problem of membrane fouling. Moreover, these technologies are often not sustainable for implementation in many energy-and-water-starved developing countries.
We have, therefore, concentrating on research and progress of nanomaterials and energy-efficient membrane development to overcome membrane fouling and scaling prevention. We have also focused on the modification of membrane process such as forward osmosis. We have also discussed the integration of renewable energies such as solar desalination and hybrid power generation such as nuclear desalination to reduce carbon footprint and enhance cost-effectiveness to obtain fresh water. From the viewpoint of water–energy nexus, choosing the right types of desalination techniques and processes should be strategically planned, designed, and implemented to achieve water security.
The drinking water sector is off track to reach Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6.1 with over a quarter of the world’s population lacking safe and reliable services. Policy approaches are shifting away from provision of access towards managing the multiple risks of water supply and quality. By considering how infrastructure, information, and institutional systems evolved in Bangladesh, this article identifies the unintentional consequences of reallocating management responsibility for rural water services away from government agencies towards individuals and households.
Between 2012 and 2017, we estimate up to forty-five unregulated tubewells were installed privately for every publicly funded rural waterpoint. This growth rate more than doubled total national waterpoint infrastructure since 2006. The scale of growth is reflected in the declining ratio of households per tubewell from over fifty-seven in 1982 to less than two in 2017, potentially approaching market saturation. This scale of growth aligns to an observed decrease in the real price of private market shallow tubewells by seventy percent between 1982 and 2017. In 2018, we estimate households invested up to USD253 million in tubewells, nearly sixty-five percent of the total national water and sanitation sector’s household-level finance. In effect, household investments became critical to achieve the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) target of improved infrastructure access, but now pose challenges for meeting targets of safely managed services. The scale of continued private investment provides an opportunity for policymakers to explore blended public finance models to meet emerging consumer preferences, while at the same time introducing regulatory and monitoring systems.
Globally, some 2.5 billion people depend solely on groundwater to satisfy their daily drinking water needs. The reliance on this resource and its centrality to realize the human right to ‘safe’ drinking water has increased manifold, but this is yet to be fully acknowledged globally or by governments and political leaders at the national level. This paper analyses the interface of international human rights law, as corresponding to the obligations and responsibilities of different actors, regarding groundwater resources planning, management and protection. Drawing on the literature, we discuss the State’s duties to respect, protect and fulfil this right especially in relation to the freedom of end-users to self-supply from groundwater sources; the training and regulation of non-State service providers including drillers and private vendors; and health and safety concerns. Interpreting the State’s duty to ‘fulfil’ through direct water service provision ‘as a last resort’, this paper suggests that self-provision is the original norm for enjoying the right to water. This has significant implications for the State’s role in raising awareness concerning point source protection and aquifer recharge for water resources management and in decisions concerning water allocation. By ignoring self-provision, which is primarily from groundwater, the State is not only missing a tremendous opportunity but is jeopardizing the water security of future generations.
Climate change may affect human health through multiple and interactive pathways that include safe water scarcity. However, impacts of climate change-induced water scarcity on health and well-being are complex. About 80% of illnesses in developing countries are attributed to unsafe drinking water and waterborne diseases. In Southwestern Bangladesh, lack of safe drinking water is a severe crisis due to climate change. The study investigated the impacts of climate change on water resources and human health in a coastal area. A questionnaire survey was carried out in two villages of Shymnagar upazila on the southwestern coast to investigate the present status of safe water sources and health care facilities and their impacts on the local community. The results show that the local community believes that climate change is having substantial impacts on freshwater sources and health. More than 70% of the respondents identified diarrhea, dysentery, and skin diseases as the prime waterborne health risks that occur through climate-related safe water scarcity. By synthesizing the ground data, we suggest pathways to health adaptation to climate change effects and safe water scarcity through locally available adaptive practices such as the use of pond sand filters, rainwater harvesting, and importing potable water with the active participation of the government, nongovernmental organizations, and communities.
In the coastal region of Bangladesh, groundwater is mainly used for domestic and agricultural purposes, but salinization of many groundwater resources limits its suitability for human consumption and practical application. This paper reports the results of a study that has mapped the salinity distribution in different aquifer layers up to a depth of 300 m in a region bordering the Bay of Bengal based on the main hydrochemistry and has investigated the origin of the salinity using Cl/Br ratios of the samples. The subsurface consists of a sequence of deltaic sediments with an alternation of more sandy and clayey sections in which several aquifer layers can be recognized. The main hydrochemistry shows different main water types in the different aquifers, indicating varying stages of freshening or salinization processes. The most freshwater, soft NaHCO3-type water with Cl concentrations mostly below 100 mg/l, is found in the deepest aquifer at 200–300 m below ground level (b.g.l.), in which the fresh/saltwater interface is pushed far to the south. Salinity is a main problem in the shallow aquifer systems, where Cl concentrations rise to nearly 8000 mg/l and the groundwater is mostly brackish NaCl water. Investigation of the Cl/Br ratios has shown that the source of the salinity in the deep aquifer is mixing with old connate seawater and that the saline waters in the more shallow aquifers do not originate from old connate water or direct seawater intrusion, but are derived from the dissolution of evaporite salts. These must have been formed in a tidal flat under influence of a strong seasonal precipitation pattern. Long dry seasons with high evaporation rates have evaporated seawater from inundated gullies and depressions, leading to salt precipitation, while subsequent heavy monsoon rains have dissolved the formed salts, and the solution has infiltrated in the subsoil, recharging groundwater.
Salinity intrusion in coastal Bangladesh has serious population health implications, which are yet to be clearly understood. The study was undertaken through the ‘Assessing Health, Livelihoods, Ecosystem Services and Poverty Alleviation in Populous Deltas’ project in coastal Bangladesh. Drinking water salinity and blood pressure measurements were carried out during the household survey campaign. The study explored association among Socio-Ecological Systems (SESs), drinking water salinity and blood pressure.
High blood pressure (prehypertension and hypertension) was found significantly associated with drinking water salinity. People exposed to slightly saline (1000–2000 mg/l) and moderately saline (≥2000 mg/l) concentration drinking water had respectively 17% (p < 0.1) and 42% (p < 0.05) higher chance of being hypertensive than those who consumed fresh water (<1000 mg/l). Women had 31% higher chance of being hypertensive than men. Also, respondents of 35 years and above were about 2.4 times more likely to be hypertensive compared to below 35 years age group. For the 35 years and above age group, both prehypertension and hypertension were found higher than national rural statistics (50.1%) for saline water categories (53.8% for slightly and 62.5% for moderate saline). For moderate salinity exposure, hypertension prevalence was found respectively 21%, 60% and 48% higher than national statistics (23.6%) in consecutive survey rounds among the respondents. Though there was small seasonal variation in drinking water salinity, however blood pressure showed an increasing trend and maximum during the dry season. Mean salinity and associated hypertension prevalence were found higher for deep aquifer (21.6%) compared to shallow aquifer (20.8%).
Localized increase in soil and groundwater salinity was predicted over the study area. Shallow aquifer salinity increase was projected based on modelled output of soil salinity. Rather than uniform increase, there were localized extreme values. Deep aquifer salinity was also predicted to exhibit increasing trend over the period. Study findings and recommendations are suggested for immediate and planned intervention.
Southwest coastal Bangladesh has an acute scarcity of safe drinking water. Both the government and non-government organizations are now promoting reverse osmosis based small scale desalination plants (SSDPs) to ensure safe drinking water. The aim of this study was to assess the physico-chemical and bacteriological quality of the desalination plants (DPs) installed in southwest coastal Bangladesh. Water samples were collected from the inlet and outlet of 10 DPs. The product water mostly complied with water quality standards. High levels of total dissolved solids (TDS) and electrical conductivity (EC) in feed water were reduced significantly after the treatment, although 10% and 20% of the product water samples respectively did not comply with the WHO drinking water standards for those parameters. Compliance of product water with the WHO and Bangladesh drinking water standards for chloride, bicarbonate and sodium were found in respectively 80%, 90% and 70% of the samples, although their concentrations in all the feed water samples were higher than both of the standards. About one-third of the DPs did not meet the drinking water standard for sodium, which may be an important health concern for the people consuming this water. Apart from one of the DPs, all of them complied with the standard for faecal coliform and Escherichia coli. Results suggest that proper maintenance of the SSDPs is necessary to ensure safe drinking water for the coastal population of southwest Bangladesh.
Research aimed at contributing to the further development of integrated water resources management needs to tackle complex challenges at the interface of nature and society. A case study in the Cuvelai-Etosha Basin in Namibia has shown how semi-arid conditions coinciding with high population density and urbanisation present a risk to people's livelihoods and ecosystem health. In order to increase water security and promote sustainable water management, there is a requirement for problem-oriented research approaches combined with a new way of thinking about water in order to generate evidence-based, adapted solutions. Transdisciplinary research in particular addresses this issue by focusing on the problems that arise when society interacts with nature. This article presents the implementation of a transdisciplinary research approach in the above-mentioned case study. The concept of social-ecological systems (SES) plays a key role in operationalising the transdisciplinary research process. Application of the SES concept helps to outline the problem by defining the epistemic object, as well as structure the research process itself in terms of formulating research questions and developing the research design. It is argued here that the SES concept is not merely useful, but also necessary for guiding transdisciplinary sustainability research and implementation. The study from Namibia clearly demonstrates that the introduction of technological innovations such as rainwater and floodwater harvesting plants requires a social-ecological perspective. In particular this means considering questions around knowledge, practices and institutions related to water resources management and includes various societal innovations alongside technologies on the agenda.
Risks have been classically understood as a probability of damage or a potential hazard resulting in appropriate management strategies. However, current research on environmental issues such as pollutants in the aquatic environment or the impacts of climate change have shown that classical management approaches do not sufficiently cover these interactions between society and nature and need to be reconsidered. In this paper, the authors aim at developing a more thorough understanding of risks related to society-nature interactions which goes beyond a classical understanding. A social-ecological perspective is elaborated by drawing on the concept of societal relations with nature and the model of provisioning systems. This perspective is used to analyze four cases, pharmaceuticals, microplastics, semi-centralized water infrastructures and forest management, with regard to risk identification, assessment and management. Finally, the paper aims at developing a perspective on risks which takes into account non-intended side-effects, system interdependencies and uncertainty.
The study was designed to collect water samples over two seasons—wet-monsoon season (n = 96) (March–April) and dry-monsoon season (n = 44) (September–October)—to understand the seasonal variation in anion and cation hydrochemistry of the coastal rivers and estuaries contributing in the spatial trend in salinity. Hydrochemical examination of wet-monsoon season primarily revealed Ca–Mg–HCO3 type (66%) and followed by Na–Cl type (17.70%) water. In the dry-monsoon season, the scenario reversed with primary water being Na–Cl type (52.27%) followed by Ca–Mg–HCO3 type (31.81%). Analysis of Cl/Br molar ratio vs. Cl (mg/L) depicted sampling area affected by seawater intrusion (SWI). Spatial analysis by ordinary kriging method confirmed approximately 77% sample in the dry-monsoon, and 34% of the wet-monsoon season had shown SWI. The most saline-intruded areas in the wet-monsoon seasons were extreme south-west coastal zone of Bangladesh, lower Meghna River floodplain and Meghna estuarine floodplain and south-eastern part of Chittagong coastal plains containing the districts of Chittagong and Cox’s Bazar adjacent to Bay of Bengal. In addition, mid-south zone is also affected slightly in the dry-monsoon season. From the analyses of data, this study could further help to comprehend seasonal trends in the hydrochemistry and water quality of the coastal and estuarine rivers. In addition, it can help policy makers to obligate some important implications for the future initiatives taken for the management of land, water, fishery, agriculture and environment of coastal rivers and estuaries of Bangladesh.
As attention increasingly turns to the sustainability of rural water supplies - and not simply overall levels of coverage or access - water point functionality has become a core concern for development practitioners and national governments, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa. Within the long-enduring Community-Based Management (CBM) model this has resulted in increased scrutiny of the “functionality” of the local water point committee (WPC) or similar community management organisation. This paper reviews the literature written from both practice-focused and critical-academic perspectives and identifies three areas that pose challenges to our understanding of water point functionality as it relates to CBM. These concern the relative neglect of (i) the local institutional and socio-economic landscape, (ii) broader governance processes and power dynamics, and (iii) the socio-technical interface. By examining these three areas, the paper engages with the specific issue of WPC functionality, whilst also considering broader issues relating to the framing of problems in development and the methodological and disciplinary ways that these are addressed. Furthermore, by focusing on community management of rural water points, the paper lays the ground for a more substantial critique of the continuing persistence of the CBM model as a central development strategy.
This paper explores the daily risks of households with respect to dimensions of inadequate water access and supply (quality, quantity, continuity and affordability). We describe how perceptions of risk are shaped and how households seek to reduce possible health impacts and potential economic losses through aversion behaviours. To this end, households’ activities relating to water storage, treatment and usage, together with water source preference, were analysed using a qualitative approach. We developed a framework that describes actual risk, risk perceptions and aversion behaviours. Risk perceptions and the adoption of aversion behaviours of varying frequency and intensity are based on a complex interaction between personal and shared experiences that relate to water supply dimensions, socioeconomic characteristics, and social networking. Moreover, we discuss household risk management strategies and provide some recommendations aimed at improving future approaches to the study of aversion behaviours.
Although the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) target for drinking water was met, in many developing countries water supplies are unreliable. This paper reviews how households in developing countries cope with unreliable water supplies, including coping costs, the distribution of coping costs across socio-economic groups, and effectiveness of coping strategies in meeting household water needs. Structured searches were conducted in peer-reviewed and grey literature in electronic databases and search engines, and 28 studies were selected for review, out of 1643 potentially relevant references. Studies were included if they reported on strategies to cope with unreliable household water supplies and were based on empirical research in developing countries. Common coping strategies include drilling wells, storing water, and collecting water from alternative sources. The choice of coping strategies is influenced by income, level of education, land tenure and extent of unreliability. The findings of this review highlight that low-income households bear a disproportionate coping burden, as they often engage in coping strategies such as collecting water from alternative sources, which is labour and time-intensive, and yields smaller quantities of water. Such alternative sources may be of lower water quality, and pose health risks. In the absence of dramatic improvements in the reliability of water supplies, a point of critical avenue of enquiry should be what coping strategies are effective and can be readily adopted by low income households.
Social Ecology is an interdisciplinary research field rooted in the traditions of both the Social Sciences and Natural Sciences. The common denominator of this research field is not a shared label but a shared paradigm. Related labels that extend beyond Social Ecology include Human Ecology, Industrial Ecology, Ecological Economics and Socioecological Systems Analysis. The core axioms of the shared paradigm are that human social and natural systems interact, coevolve over time and have substantial impacts upon one another, with causality working in both directions. Social Ecology offers a conceptual approach to society-nature coevolution pertaining to history, to current development processes and to a future sustainability transition. This chapter reviews several academic traditions that have contributed to the emergence of this paradigm and then describes the research areas belonging to the field. One cluster deals with society’s biophysical structures (such as energy and society, land use and food production and social metabolism, the field covered by Industrial Ecology and Ecological Economics). Other clusters identify the environmental impacts of human societies (such as the IPAT and footprint approaches), biohistory and society-nature coevolution. Another research area considers regulation, governance and sustainability transitions. In the last section, we describe the distinguishing characteristics of the Vienna Social Ecology School.
National drinking water assessments for Bangladesh do not reflect local variability, or temporal differences. This paper reports on the findings of an interdisciplinary investigation of drinking water insecurity in a rural coastal south-western Bangladesh. Drinking water quality is assessed by comparison of locally measured concentrations to national levels and water quality criteria; resident's access to potable water and their perceptions are based on local social surveys. Residents in the study area use groundwater far less than the national average; salinity and local rainwater scarcity necessitates the use of multiple water sources throughout the year. Groundwater concentrations of arsenic and specific conductivity (SpC) were greater than surface water (pond) concentrations; there was no statistically significant seasonal difference in mean concentrations in groundwater, but there was for ponds, with arsenic higher in the dry season. Average arsenic concentrations in local water drinking were 2-4 times times the national average. All of the local groundwater samples exceeded the Bangladesh guidance for SpC, although the majority of residents surveyed did not perceive their water as having a 'bad' or 'salty' taste.
Drinking water in much of Asia, particularly in coastal and rural settings, is provided by a variety of sources, which are widely distributed and frequently managed at an individual or local community level. Coastal and near-inland drinking water sources in South and South East (SSE) Asia are vulnerable to contamination by seawater, most dramatically from tropical cyclone induced storm surges. This paper assesses spatial vulnerabilities to salinisation of drinking water sources due to meteorological variability and climate change along the (ca. 6000 km) coastline of SSE Asia. The risks of increasing climatic stresses are first considered, and then maps of relative vulnerability along the entire coastline are developed, using data from global scale land surface models, along with an overall vulnerability index. The results show that surface and near-surface drinking water in the coastal areas of the mega-deltas in Vietnam and Bangladesh-India are most vulnerable, putting more than 25 million people at risk of drinking ‘saline’ water. Climate change is likely to exacerbate this problem, with adverse consequences for health, such as prevalence of hypertension and cardiovascular diseases. There is a need for identifying locations that are most at risk of salinisation in order for policy makers and local officials to implement strategies for reducing these health impacts. To counter the risks associated with these vulnerabilities, possible adaptation measures are also outlined. We conclude that detailed and fine scale vulnerability assessments may become crucial for planning targeted adaptation programmes along these coasts.
Electronic supplementary material
The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s10584-016-1617-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorised users.
Community wells that extend deeper than most private wells are crucial for reducing exposure to groundwater arsenic (As) in rural Bangladesh. This study evaluates the impact on access to safe drinking water of 915 such intermediate (90-150 m) and deep (>150 m) wells across a 180 km(2) area where a total of 48,790 tubewells were tested with field kits in 2012-13. Half the shallow private wells meet the Bangladesh standard of 50 µg/L for As in drinking water, whereas 92% of the intermediate and deep wells meet the more restrictive World Health Organization guideline for As in drinking water of 10 µg/L. As a proxy for water access, distance calculations show that 29% of shallow wells with >50 µg/L As are located within walking distance (100 m) of at least one of the 915 intermediate or deep wells. Similar calculations for a hypothetical more even distribution of deep wells show that 74% of shallow wells with >50 µg/L As could have been located within 100 m of the same number deep wells. These observations and well-usage data suggest that community wells in Araihazar, and probably elsewhere in Bangladesh, were not optimally allocated by the government because of elite capture.
We discuss the epistemological aspects of social-ecological systems (SES) analysis, particularly in relation to coastal and marine research and the integrated coastal zone management (ICZM), but also in relation to interdisciplinary approaches and frameworks such as sustainability science and sustainable resource management. From this discussion, we propose suggestions on how to develop SES as a framework for interdisciplinary social-ecological research.
We conclude that a knowledge-based strategy to systematically address complex problems can be constructed. A knowledge-based strategy can also study ecological and social processes at different system dimensions and scales, from local to global. SES analysis holds promise if it is developed along inclusive, interdisciplinary lines on an epistemologically balanced and theoretically and methodologically sound basis.
The use of resources in coastal and marine areas includes the social contexts of multiple use, different forms of ownership, and conflicts over the use of resources in water and land areas. Explicitly used knowledge systems include scientific, managerial and local knowledge from various stakeholders.
The development of interdisciplinary methods for coastal and marine research, stimulated through SES, can become an important area in SES analysis. In principle, a large number of methods and tools from the social and natural sciences may be used in interdisciplinary coastal and marine research. However, methods that will facilitate the integration and synthesis of knowledge from different disciplines are, at best, in infancy today. There are strong indications, however, that SES analysis has the potential to upgrade ICZM and incorporate it into an interdisciplinary social-ecological research framework.
Since the early 1970s, coastal and marine research has quickly adopted the integrated coastal zone management (ICZM) approach. Early ICZM was driven by the practical requirements of resource use and management, and, therefore, it had limited scientific aspirations in conceptual, theoretical and methodological terms. To date, it has become the mainstream approach for coastal management and coastal and marine policies. Because ICZM comprehensively integrates natural and social science research, it also has the potential to become a “pilot concept” for social-ecological systems (SES) analysis.
Frameworks play an important role in analyzing social-ecological systems (SESs) because they provide shared concepts and variables that enable comparison between and accumulation of knowledge across multiple cases. One prominent SES framework focusing on local resource use has been developed by Elinor Ostrom and her colleagues. This framework is an extensive multi-tier collection of concepts and variables that have demonstrated relevance for explaining outcomes in a large number of case studies in the context of fishery, water, and forestry common-pool resources. The further development of this framework has raised a number of issues related to the formal relationships between the large number of concepts and variables involved. In particular, issues related to criteria for ordering the concepts into tiers, adding new concepts, defining outcomes metrics, and representing dynamics in the framework have been identified. We address these issues by applying methods from research fields that study formal relationships between concepts such as domain-specific languages, knowledge representation, and software engineering. We find that SES frameworks could include the following seven formal components: variables, concepts, attribution relationships, subsumption relationships, process relationships, aggregation relationships, and evaluation metrics. Applying these components to the Ostrom framework and a case study of recreational fishery, we find that they provide clear criteria for structuring concepts into tiers, defining outcome metrics, and representing dynamics. The components identified are generic, and the insights gained from this exercise may also be beneficial for the development of other SES frameworks.
Fresh water resources are scarce in rural communities in the southern deltaic plains of Bangladesh where both shallow and deep groundwater is frequently brackish, and fresh water ponds have been increasingly salinized by inundation during storm surges and brackish-water aquaculture. Low-cost aquifer storage and recovery (ASR) schemes were constructed at 13 villages in three coastal districts by developing storage in shallow confined fine to medium sand aquifers overlain by variable thicknesses of silt and clay. A typical ASR scheme consisted of a double-chambered graded sand filtration tank with a volume of 19.5 m(3) that feeds filtered pond water to four to six large diameter (d = 30.5 or 56 cm) infiltration wells through PVC pipes fitted with stop valves and flow meters. The infiltration wells were completed at 18-31 m below ground and filled with well-sorted gravel capped with a thin layer of fine sand that acts as a second stage filter. Infiltration rates at 13 sites averaged 3 m(3)/day (range: 3-6 m(3)/day) over one year of operation. At 11 sites where water was abstracted, the recovery rate ranged from 5 to 40%. The source pond source water frequently had turbidity values of >= 100 NTU. After sand filtration, the turbidity is typically 5 NTU. Despite this, clogging management involving frequent (monthly to weekly) manual washing to remove fine materials deposited in the sand filtration tank and the infiltration wells is found to be necessary and effective, with post-manual-washing operational infiltration rates restored to annual average values. E. coli counts in recovered water are greatly reduced compared to raw pond water, although E. coli is still detected in about half of the samples. Arsenic in recovered water was detected to be at level of >100 mu g/L repeatedly at three sites, suggesting that As risks must be carefully managed and require further investigation. (C) 2014 American Society of Civil Engineers.
In this paper we compare 10 established frameworks for analyzing social-ecological systems. We limited ourselves to frameworks that were explicitly designed to be used by a wider community of researchers and practitioners. Although all these frameworks seem to have emerged from the need for concepts that permit structured, interdisciplinary reasoning about complex problems in social-ecological systems, they differ significantly with respect to contextual and structural criteria, such as conceptualization of the ecological and social systems and their interrelation. It appears that three main criteria suffice to produce a classification of frameworks that may be used as a decision tree when choosing a framework for analysis. These criteria are (i) whether a framework conceptualizes the relationship between the social and ecological systems as being uni- or bidirectional; (ii) whether it takes an anthropocentric or an ecocentric perspective on the ecological system; and (iii) whether it is an action-oriented or an analysis-oriented framework.
Background
Hypertensive disorders in pregnancy are among the leading causes of maternal and perinatal death in low-income countries, but the aetiology remains unclear. We investigated the relationship between salinity in drinking water and the risk of (pre)eclampsia and gestational hypertension in a coastal community.
Methods
A population-based case-control study was conducted in Dacope, Bangladesh among 202 pregnant women with (pre)eclampsia or gestational hypertension, enrolled from the community served by the Upazilla Health Complex, Dacope and 1,006 matched controls from the same area. Epidemiological and clinical data were obtained from all participants. Urinary sodium and sodium levels in drinking water were measured. Logistic regression was used to calculate odds ratios, and 95% confidence intervals.
Findings
Drinking water sources had exceptionally high sodium levels (mean 516.6 mg/L, S.D 524.2). Women consuming tube-well (groundwater) were at a higher disease risk than rainwater users (p<0.001). Adjusted risks for (pre)eclampsia and gestational hypertension considered together increased in a dose-response manner for increasing sodium concentrations (300.01–600 mg/L, 600.1–900 mg/L, >900.01 mg/L, compared to <300 mg/L) in drinking water (ORs 3.30 [95% CI 2.00–5.51], 4.40 [2.70–7.25] and 5.48 [3.30–9.11] (p-trend<0.001). Significant associations were seen for both (pre)eclampsia and gestational hypertension separately.
Interpretation
Salinity in drinking water is associated with increased risk of (pre)eclampsia and gestational hypertension in this population. Given that coastal populations in countries such as Bangladesh are confronted with high salinity exposure, which is predicted to further increase as a result of sea level rise and other environmental influences, it is imperative to develop and evaluate affordable approaches to providing water with low salt content.
The physical geography of Bangladesh’s coastal area is more diverse and dynamic than is generally recognised. Failure to recognise this has led to serious misconceptions about the potential impacts of a rising sea-level on Bangladesh with global warming. This situation has been aggravated by accounts giving incorrect information on current rates of coastal erosion and land subsidence. This paper describes physical conditions within individual physiographic regions in Bangladesh’s coastal area based on ground-surveyed information, and it reviews possible area-specific mitigation measures to counter predicted rates of sea-level rise in the 21st century. Two important conclusions are drawn: the adoption of appropriate measures based on knowledge of the physical geography of potentially-affected areas could significantly reduce the currently-predicted displacement of many millions of people; and the impacts of a slowly-rising sea-level are currently much less than those generated by rapidly increasing population pressure on Bangladesh’s available land and water resources and by exposure to existing environmental hazards, and the latter problems need priority attention.
This study investigates existing water supply scenario, and evaluates the performance of pond sand filter (PSF) in meeting drinking water demand of Dacope Upazila in southwest coastal Bangladesh. Questionnaire survey to the villagers reveals that PSF is the major drinking water sources (38 %) of the study area followed by tubewells (30.4 %), rainwater harvesting (RWH) systems (12.6 %), ponds (10.3 %) and others (8.7 %). The spot test and laboratory analysis show that odour, colour, pH, dissolved oxygen, hardness, calcium, magnesium, nitrate, sulphate and phosphate of the PSFs water meet Bangladesh standard. The efficiency of PSF in reducing total dissolved solids (TDS) (15 %) and potassium (8.2 %) is not enough to meet the standard of 20 % PSFs for TDS and one-third PSFs for potassium. The study proves that PSF is unable to remove coliform bacteria by 100 % from highly contaminated water. Hence, disinfection should be adopted before distribution to ensure safe drinking water. Majority of the PSF’s users (80 %) are either partially satisfied or dissatisfied with the existing system. The beneficiary’s willingness to pay for drinking water technologies seems that the combination of PSF and RWH could ensure sustainable drinking water in coastal region of Bangladesh.
Domestic water and sanitation provide examples of a situation where long-term, target-driven efforts have been launched with the objective of reducing the proportion of people who are water-insecure, most recently through the millennium development goals (MDGs) framework. Impacts of these efforts have been monitored by an increasingly evidence-based system, and plans for the next period of international policy, which are likely to aim at universal coverage with basic water and sanitation, are being currently developed. As distinct from many other domains to which the concept of water security is applied, domestic or personal water security requires a perspective that incorporates the reciprocal notions of provision and risk, as the current status of domestic water and sanitation security is dominated by deficiency This paper reviews the interaction of science and technology with policies, practice and monitoring, and explores how far domestic water can helpfully fit into the proposed concept of water security, how that is best defined, and how far the human right to water affects the situation. It is considered that they fit well together in terms both of practical planning of targets and indicators and as a conceptual framework to help development. The focus needs to be broad, to extend beyond households, to emphasize maintenance as well as construction and to increase equity of access. International and subnational monitoring need to interact, and monitoring results need to be meaningful to service providers as well as users.
Risks to universal drinking water security are accelerating due to rapid demographic, climate and economic change. Policy responses are slow, uneven and largely inadequate to address the nature and scale of the global challenges. The challenges relate both to maintaining water security in increasingly fragile supply systems and to accelerating reliable access to the hundreds of millions who remain water-insecure. A conceptual framework illustrates the relationship between institutional, operational and financial risks and drinking water security outcomes. We apply the framework to nine case studies from rural and urban contexts in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. Case studies are purposively selected based on established and emerging examples of political, technological or institutional reforms that address water security risks. We find broad evidence that improved information flows reduce institutional costs and promote stronger and more transparent operational performance to increase financial sustainability. However, political barriers need to be overcome in all cases through internal or external interventions that require often decadal time frames and catalytic investments. No single model exists, though there is sufficient evidence to demonstrate that risks to drinking water security can be reduced even in the most difficult and challenging contexts.
Achieving basic water security, both harnessing the productive potential of water and limiting its destructive impact, has always been a societal priority. To capture this duality, water security is defined here as the availability of an acceptable quantity and quality of water for health, livelihoods, ecosystems and production, coupled with an acceptable level of water-related risks to people, environments and economies. This paper looks broadly at those countries that have achieved water security, the paths they chose and the costs they paid, and those countries that have not achieved water security and how this constrains economies and societies. It defines three typologies: countries that have harnessed hydrology, those hampered by hydrology and those that are hostage to hydrology. It finds that countries remaining hostage to hydrology are typically among the world's poorest. They face “difficult” hydrologies often characterized by high inter- and intra-annual rainfall and runoff variability, where the level of institutional and infrastructure investment needed is very high and the ability to invest is low.
This paper seeks to capture the dynamics of achieving water security in a hypothetical water and growth “S-curve”, which illustrates how a minimum platform of investments in water institutions and infrastructure can produce a tipping point beyond which water makes an increasingly positive contribution to growth and how that tipping point will vary in different circumstances. As there are inevitable trade-offs, achieving water security is never without social and environmental costs; in some countries these are significant, often unforeseen and even unacceptable. This brief analysis suggests that the only historically demonstrated path to achieving water security at the national level has been through investment in an evolving balance of complementary institutions and infrastructure, but that lessons exist for following this basic path in more sustainable and balanced ways. Insights are provided for balancing and sequencing investments, adapting to changing values and priorities, and pushing down the social and environmental costs.
The paper concludes that most water-insecure countries today face far greater challenges than those that achieved water security in the last century and are wealthy countries today. They face more difficult hydrologies and a greater understanding of and therefore greater responsibility for, the social and environment trade-offs inherent in water management. As the costs of poor countries not achieving water security, in terms of human suffering, sustained poverty, constrained growth and social unrest, would be very high, achieving water security is a challenge that must be recognized and must be met.
This article argues that resource access, use, control, ownership and conflict are not only mediated through social relations of power, but also through emotional geographies where gendered subjectivities and embodied emotions constitute how nature–society relations are lived and experienced on a daily basis. By engaging the insights from feminist political ecology literatures and emotional geographies literatures, the article demonstrates that resource struggles and conflicts are not just material challenges but emotional ones, which are mediated through bodies, spaces and emotions. Such a focus fleshes out the complexities, entanglements and messy relations that constitute political ecologies of resources management, where practices and processes are negotiated through constructions of gender, embodiments, and emotions. Abstractions of ‘resource struggles’ and ‘resource conflicts’ are thereby grounded in embodied emotional geographies of places, peoples, and resources, enabling us to better understand the ways resources and emotions come to matter in everyday survival struggles. This framing can enrich feminist political ecology theorizations and texture our understandings of commonly-used terms such as access, use, control, conflict and struggles vis-à-vis natural resources in any context. In other words, we are better able to conceptualize and explain how and why people access, use, and struggle over resources the ways they do. A case study of drinking water contamination from Bangladesh is used to develop the theoretical arguments in contributing to existing debates in (feminist) political ecologies.
1] Arsenic concentrations measured by graphite furnace atomic absorption range from < 5 to 900 mg/L in groundwater pumped from 6000 wells within a 25 km 2 area of Bangladesh. The proportion of wells that exceed the Bangladesh standard for drinking water of 50 mg/L arsenic increases with depth from 25% between 8 and 10 m to 75% between 15 and 30 m, then declines gradually to less than 10% at 90 m. Some villages within the study area do not have a single well that meets the standard, while others have wells that are nearly all acceptable. In contrast to the distribution of arsenic in the 8–30 m depth range which does not follow any obvious geological feature, the arsenic content of groundwater associated with relatively oxic Pleistocene sand deposits appears to be consistently low. The depth of drilling necessary to reach these low-As aquifers ranges from 30 to 120 m depth within the study area. INDEX TERMS: 1030 Geochemistry: Geochemical cycles (0330); 1045 Geochemistry: Low-temperature geochemistry; 1806 Hydrology: Chemistry of fresh water; 1831 Hydrology: Groundwater quality; 1884 Hydrology: Water supply; KEYWORDS: arsenic, groundwater, Bangladesh, tube well Citation: van Geen, A., et al., Spatial variability of arsenic in 6000 tube wells in a 25 km 2 area of Bangladesh, Water Resour. Res., 39(5), 1140, doi:10.1029/2002WR001617, 2003.
Background: Drinking water from natural sources in coastal Bangladesh has become contaminated by varying degrees of salinity due to saltwater intrusion from rising sea levels, cyclone and storm surges, and upstream withdrawal of freshwater.
Objective: Our objective was to estimate salt intake from drinking water sources and examine environmental factors that may explain a seasonal excess of hypertension in pregnancy.
Methods: Water salinity data (1998–2000) for Dacope, in rural coastal Bangladesh, were obtained from the Centre for Environment and Geographic Information System in Bangladesh. Information on drinking water sources, 24-hr urine samples, and blood pressure was obtained from 343 pregnant Dacope women during the dry season (October 2009 through March 2010). The hospital-based prevalence of hypertension in pregnancy was determined for 969 pregnant women (July 2008 through March 2010).
Results: Average estimated sodium intakes from drinking water ranged from 5 to 16 g/day in the dry season, compared with 0.6–1.2 g/day in the rainy season. Average daily sodium excretion in urine was 3.4 g/day (range, 0.4–7.7 g/day). Women who drank shallow tube-well water were more likely to have urine sodium > 100 mmol/day than women who drank rainwater [odds ratio (OR) = 2.05; 95% confidence interval (CI), 1.11–3.80]. The annual hospital prevalence of hypertension in pregnancy was higher in the dry season (OR = 12.2%; 95% CI, 9.5–14.8) than in the rainy season (OR = 5.1%; 95% CI, 2.91–7.26).
Conclusions: The estimated salt intake from drinking water in this population exceeded recommended limits. The problem of saline intrusion into drinking water has multiple causes and is likely to be exacerbated by climate change–induced sea-level rise.
This paper reports the main findings from a multi-country research project designed to develop a better understanding of the performance of community-managed rural water supply systems in developing countries. Data was collected from households, village water committees, focus groups of village residents, system operators, and key informants in 400 rural communities in Peru, Bolivia, and Ghana. Our findings suggest that the demand-driven, community management model, coupled with access to spare parts and some technical expertise, has come a long way toward unravelling the puzzle of how to best design and implement rural water supply programs in developing countries. In all three countries, rural water supply projects were “working”. Among the households included in our sample in Peru and Bolivia, 95 percent had operational taps at the time of our field visit. In 90 percent of the villages in Ghana, all project boreholes were still working. Not only were the rural water systems not broken down, but almost all the households in these communities were using at least some of their water from the systems. However, some households were also still using water from other sources. In Ghana, 38 percent of households still reported using water from unprotected sources (e.g. springs, rivers and open wells) for drinking and/or cooking. Another troublesome finding is that rural households in the sample villages are paying very little for the improved water services, and, as a result, the finances of many village water committees are in poor shape.
The need to adapt human resource demands to the renewable capacities of ecosystems is widely acknowledged and has been transposed into multiple international and national commitments and strategies. This need is intensified by the contemporary öfull world’ and increasing human numbers, urbanisation and climate change. However, resource exploitation models, markets and legacy regulations still tend to perpetuate an öempty world’ model, separating societal demands from environmental capacity.
Water resource management exemplifies many natural resource challenges. Choice of water management technologies still tends to maximise the efficiency of resource extraction and diversion to areas of high demand and economic influence, without necessarily prioritising the sustainability of the foundational natural capital of catchment ecosystems and the multiple benefits they provide to a diversity of co-dependents.
Setting the impacts of technology choices within the conceptual framework of catchment ecosystem services forms a novel basis for recognising the often overlooked or disregarded externalities of differing types of water management techniques. It also provides insights into means to mitigate and sustainably hybridise qualitatively differing water management approaches to safeguard, and ideally to rebuild where degraded, the capacities of catchments to meet human needs on an enduring and equitable basis.
Understanding the complexity of social-ecological systems is fundamental for achieving sustainability. Historically, humans have benefited from the ecosystem services offered by nature at the same time that natural systems have increasingly changed because of anthropogenic activities. The lack of methods to unveil and understand such associations might hinder the integrated management of coastal marine areas. In our study, we applied a methodological framework used in terrestrial systems to identify and spatially locate the coastal marine social-ecological systems (CMSESs) on the southern Mediterranean Spanish coast. These CMSESs represent areas with similar human-nature associations that result from sharing similar socioeconomic and marine environmental characteristics. We applied several multivariate analyses to identify and characterize these CMSESs. We found the presence of twelve CMSESs that suggest a co-evolution of the social-ecological associations in these areas. Our results highlight the need for integrated coastal planning and management that consider the specific characteristics and conservation challenges of each CMSES. Our study provides evidence that a successful methodological framework to identify and characterize social-ecological systems can be applied in coastal areas and contribute to integrated management for the sustainability of these fragile systems.
Understanding the interdependency, availability, and accessibility of surface water and groundwater plays a major role in identifying and managing water security. The Ganges Delta in Bangladesh is a classic example of a water insecurity scenario in a transboundary river basin where concerns in quantity, quality, and timing of available water are producing disastrous conditions. This study examines surface water and groundwater uses and demands, seasonal availability, sustainability, and potential water security concerns. Human interventions that can influence seasonal water availability and shifting demands between surface water and groundwater are also examined. Surface water availability was analyzed using streamflow including the effects of upstream water diversions, rainfall, temperature, and evapotranspiration. Groundwater data was collected from 283 locations established by the Bangladesh Water Development Board. Total water storage anomaly data from the GRACE satellite (2002–2016) was analyzed to assess changes in groundwater availability. Both in situ and GRACE data show a significant declining trend in groundwater. Comparisons of groundwater recharge and withdrawal amounts in six different years (1983, 2009–2012, 2015) indicate an unsustainable water withdrawal condition. Irrigation is the largest sector of off-stream water use with total water withdrawal amounting to 31% for surface water and 68% for groundwater. The region's domestic water use entirely depends on groundwater, which is problematic due to arsenic pollution. This study provides insight into the changes in surface water and groundwater resources and limitations to freshwater availability, thereby encouraging a better management strategy for water resources in the region.
Most of the rural population of 90 million in Punjab province in Pakistan and Punjab state in India drinks, and cooks with, untreated water drawn from shallow wells. Limited laboratory testing has shown that groundwater in the region can contain toxic levels of arsenic. To refine this assessment, a total of 30,567 wells from 383 villages were tested with a field kit in northern Punjab province of Pakistan and western Punjab state of India. A subset of 431 samples also tested in the laboratory show that 85% of wells were correctly classified by the kit relative to the World Health Organization guideline of 10 μg/L for arsenic in drinking water. The kit data show that 23% of the tested wells did not meet the WHO guideline for arsenic but also that 87% of households with a well high in arsenic live within 100 m of a well that meets the WHO guideline. The implication is that many households could rapidly lower their exposure if the subset of safe wells could be shared. In a follow-up conducted one year later in five villages where 59% of wells were elevated in arsenic, two-thirds of households indicated that they had switched to a neighboring well in response to the testing. The blanket testing of millions of wells for arsenic in the region should therefore be prioritized over much costlier water treatment and piped water supply projects that will take much longer to have a comparable impact.
Sustainable Development Goal 6.1 is “to achieve universal and equitable access to safe and affordable drinking water for all”. To measure affordability of accessing clean water, coping cost approach has been adopted, and this paper contributes to the burgeoning empirical literature on measuring affordability. The objective of this paper is to estimate coping costs related to the erratic, unsafe, and inadequate water supply in the metropolitan area of Chennai, India. Based on the data collected from 423 households, we find that households in Chennai city resort to five main types of coping behaviors: collecting, pumping, treating, storing, and purchasing. We employ the multiple regression with robust errors, to estimate the determinants of the coping costs. We obtain the mean coping costs as INR (Indian Rupee) 553, and INR 658 per month for piped and non-piped households in this sample. For non-piped households, collection costs (time costs in traveling and queuing for collecting water) constitute 22% of the coping costs, while collection costs for piped households are less 2% of the coping costs. One interesting finding is the variation of coping costs with household income—these costs are roughly 1% of income for the high income households to as high as 15% for the low income households. The results outline the need of policy intervention to enhance affordability.
Effective response to groundwater salinity in the developing world may critically safeguard drinking-water supplies. Groundwater resources throughout rural Africa are exploited by a vast and increasing number of hand-pumped boreholes for community supply. Our research in TA Ngabu (Shire Valley), Southern Malawi aims to: define groundwater-salinity problem occurrence within the semi-arid alluvial-valley aquifer, rural developing-world setting; critique current capacity to respond; and, to discuss future response options - in particular considering the need to explore alternative options that boldly go beyond the world of hand-pumped groundwater supply. Salinity problem definition was achieved through survey of 419 hand-pumped boreholes that revealed widespread brackish groundwater leading to non-potable (unpalatable) drinking-water supplies. Persistent non-functionality or abandonment of boreholes was typically ascribed to salinity. Whilst salinity is conceptualised to arise from shallow-groundwater evaporation, formation-evaporite dissolution and faulted-area upwelling, sparse data locally renders attribution of salinity sources to individual boreholes difficult. There is a significant need to better resolve the vertical distribution of salinity and local controlling processes. Problem response capacity was hampered by multiple factors, including, sector inertia, low drilling costs compromising water-point integrity, and lack of technical vision for alternatives. Various recommendations are made to improve response capacity continuing to work at the hand-pump supply scale. However, in areas where salinity is significant, exploring the feasibility of other options is advocated in conjunction with technical capacity development. Groundwater options may utilise high borehole yields possible from alluvial aquifers, grossly under-exploited by hand pumps. Groundwater at depth, albeit of unknown quality typically, or pipeline transfers of probable good-quality groundwater from valley-margin units, should be considered. Surface-water pipeline supplies may be viable for (growing) population centres. Canal-fed irrigation schemes (pending for the area), should be multiple-use, protective of groundwater and embrace pipeline drinking-water supply and managed-aquifer-recharge opportunities. Advancing desalination technologies, although presently unaffordable, should be kept under review.
Given the importance of reducing diverse forms of inequality in access to water, highlighted both in the framework of the Human Right to Water (HRW) and in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), this work assesses conditions of access to water and related inequalities before and after the construction of a Water Supply System (WSS) in a rural community of Brazil's semi-arid region. A quasi-experimental study was performed to assess the conditions of access to water for study and control groups (amounting to 380 households). The methodology encompassed two phases, one prior and another subsequent to the construction of a WSS in the study community. The analytical framework of the HRW was applied, specifically the normative content regarding quality, accessibility and availability. The case study's findings help to evidence the limitations and challenges of merely infrastructure-related measures to improve access to water. The construction of a new WSS in the studied community was an improvement as it provided water of good quality to the beneficiary households, which entailed a decreased or even a no-longer-existing need to collect water for children and adolescents. However, certain problems persisted, such as the continued practice of collecting water and the use, by certain families, of water that was fecally contaminated. In a different perspective, the WSS made it possible to increase the per capita volume of water consumed by families and to reduce inequalities associated with this aspect. Meanwhile, the research reveals the possible limits of the WSS in ensuring that higher volumes of water will be consumed per capita, especially among households without intra-household water distribution infrastructure.
This study examines the relationship between rainfall and groundwater use in rural Kenya, using automatically-transmitted hourly data from handpumps (n = 266), daily rainfall records (n = 19), and household survey data (n = 2508). We demonstrate a 34% reduction in groundwater use during the wet season compared to the dry season, suggesting a large shift from improved to unimproved sources in the wet season. By cross-correlating handpump and rainfall time series, we also reveal substantial short-term changes in groundwater pumping observed immediately following heavy rainfall. Further investigation and modelling of this response reveals a 68% reduction in pump use on the day immediately following heavy rain.
We then investigate reasons for this behavioural response to rainfall, using survey data to examine the characteristics, concerns and behaviours of households in the area where the reduction in pump use was most marked. In this area rainwater harvesting was widespread and only 6% of households reported handpumps as their sole source of drinking water in the wet season, compared to 86% in the dry season. These findings shed light on the impact increasing rainfall variability may have on the Sustainable Development Goal of “universal and equitable access to safe and affordable drinking water for all”. Specifically, we suggest a flaw in the water policy assumption that the provision of improved sources of drinking water—in this case community handpumps—translates to consistent use and the associated health benefits. We note that failure to understand and account for actual water use behaviour may results in adverse public health outcomes and maladapted WASH policy and interventions.
Community-based financing of rural water supply operation and maintenance is a well-established policy principle in sub-Saharan Africa. Yet evidence from over 90,000 waterpoints in five sub-Saharan African countries suggests a majority of communities fail to establish and sustain a revenue collection system. As a result, insufficient finances to repair waterpoints can lead to lengthy downtimes or abandonment, threatening the health and welfare of millions of water users forced to revert to unsafe or distant alternatives. Applying a social-ecological systems framework to community waterpoints in rural Kenya, we empirically assess the prevalence and determinants of financial contributions among water users. The analysis draws on multi-decadal data covering 229 years' worth of water committee financial records consisting of more than 53,000 household payments. Results reveal that non-payment and late payment are prevalent, and payment behaviours are predicted by groundwater quality, waterpoint location, productive water use, and rainfall season. The findings reflect the socio-ecological nature of waterpoint sustainability in rural sub-Saharan Africa and confirm that households are not always willing and able to pay for an improved water supply. This situation is symptomatic of a fundamental operation and maintenance financing challenge that must be addressed if the Sustainable Development Goal of universal access to safe water is to be achieved.
This article reviews and contrasts two approaches that water security researchers employ to advance understanding of the complexity of water-society policy challenges. A prevailing reductionist approach seeks to represent uncertainty through calculable risk, links national GDP tightly to hydro-climatological causes, and underplays diversity and politics in society. When adopted uncritically, this approach limits policy-makers to interventions that may reproduce inequalities, and that are too rigid to deal with future changes in society and climate. A second, more integrative, approach is found to address a range of uncertainties, explicitly recognise diversity in society and the environment, incorporate water resources that are less-easily controlled, and consider adaptive approaches to move beyond conventional supply-side prescriptions. The resultant policy recommendations are diverse, inclusive, and more likely to reach the marginalised in society, though they often encounter policy-uptake obstacles. The article concludes by defining a route towards more effective water security research and policy, which stresses analysis that matches the state of knowledge possessed, an expanded research agenda, and explicitly addresses inequities.
As the disease burden of poor access to water and sanitation declines around the world, the non-health benefits - mainly the time burden of water collection - will likely grow in importance in sector funding decisions and investment analyses. We measure the coping costs incurred by households in one area of rural Kenya. Sixty percent of the 387 households interviewed were collecting water outside the home, and household members were spending an average of two to three hours doing so per day. We value these time costs using an individual-level value of travel time estimate based on a stated preference experiment. We compare these results to estimates obtained assuming that the value of time saved is a fraction of unskilled wage rates. Coping cost estimates also include capital costs for storage and rainwater collection, money paid either to water vendors or at sources that charge volumetrically, costs of treating diarrhea cases, and expenditures on drinking water treatment (primarily boiling in our site). Median total coping costs per month are approximately US$20 per month, higher than average household water bills in many utilities in the United States, or 12% of reported monthly cash income. We estimate that coping costs are greater than 10% of income for over half of households in our sample. They are higher among larger and wealthier households, and households whose primary source is not at home. Even households with unprotected private wells or connections to an intermittent piped network spend money on water storage containers and on treating water they recognize as unsafe. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
This paper examines decentralized reform initiatives in the Indian rural water sector from a policy perspective as well as from a political perspective focused on institutional design and implementation at the local level. It argues that normative economic prescriptions regarding decentralization are not very useful. The paper finds that the institutional architecture for decentralized reforms is highly contested and requires a better understanding of power and the role of micro-politics in shaping decentralization designs and outcomes. It also suggests that greater devolution in the water sector can lead to greater decentralization and democratization across sectors.
Deltaic groundwater resources are often vulnerable to degradation from seawater intrusion or through interaction with saline paleowaters. The Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna River delta, in Bangladesh and West Bengal, India, is a particularly vulnerable area with an estimated 20 million coastal inhabitants directly affected by saline drinking water. The shallow groundwater of the coastal regions is primarily brackish with pockets of fresher water. A small-scale hydrologic investigation of groundwater salinity beneath an embanked tidal channel island was undertaken to explore possible hydrogeological explanations of the distribution of water salinities in the shallow aquifer. This study employs a combination of 3 H and 14 C dating, electromagnetic subsurface mapping, and a 2-D solute transport model. The authors conclude that the shallow groundwater salinity can best be explained by the slow infiltration of meteoric water into paleo-brackish estuarine water that was deposited during the early-mid Holocene.
Water security is arguably the single most important factor regarding the future sustainability of our planet. Without water we have no life, and with depleting freshwater resources conflict can easily ensue. The intersection between hydrology and politics requires a delicate balancing from decision-makers to ensure policy is well-informed and science is well communicated. In this paper, we discuss water issues currently faced by Nepal, a nation where freshwater resources are abundant yet political pressures are threatening future water security. We argue that despite adequate water supplies a nation may still experience severe water insecurity, particularly if effective governance and equitable access are not prioritised. We explore potential policy options necessary to achieve a holistic framework for water resources management, which we suggest, need to consider water resource reliability, accessibility and governance as fundamental pillars for ensuring water security.
In the coastal areas of Bangladesh, scarcity of drinking water is acute as freshwater aquifers are not available at suitable depths and surface water is highly saline. Households are mainly dependent on rainwater harvesting, pond sand filters and pond water for drinking purposes. Thus, individuals in these areas often suffer from waterborne diseases. In this paper, water consumption behaviour in two southwestern coastal districts of Bangladesh has been investigated. The data for this study were collected through a survey conducted on 750 rural households in 39 villages of the study area. The sample was selected using a random sampling technique. Households' choice of water source is complex and seasonally dependent. Water sourcing patterns, households' preference of water sourcing options and economic feasibility of options suggest that a combination of household and community-based options could be suitable for year-round water supply. Distance and time required for water collection were found to be difficult for water collection from community-based options. Both household and community-based options need regular maintenance. In addition to installation of water supply facilities, it is necessary to make the residents aware of proper operation and maintenance of the facilities.
In the social sciences, two prevailing definitions of risk are: (1) risk is a situation or event where something of human value (including humans themselves) is at stake and where the outcome is uncertain; (2) risk is an uncertain consequence of an event or an activity with respect to something that humans value. According to these definitions, risk expresses an ontology (a theory of being) independent of our knowledge and perceptions. In this paper, we look closer into these two types of definitions. We conclude that the definitions provide a sound foundation for risk research and risk management, but compared to common terminology, they lead to conceptual difficulties that are incompatible with the everyday use of risk in most applications. By considering risk as a state of the world, we cannot conclude, for example, about the risk being high or low, or compare different options with respect to risk. A rephrasing of the two definitions is suggested: Risk refers to uncertainty about and severity of the consequences (or outcomes) of an activity with respect to something that humans value.
Over the past two decades, community management has become the prevalent model for management of rural water supplies throughout sub-Saharan Africa. Despite its widespread popularity among donors and implementing agencies, low water supply sustainability levels throughout the sub-continent indicate that it is not the panacea it is often presented to be. There is a strong need to distinguish between ‘community participation’ which is a prerequisite for sustainability and ‘community management’ which is not. If community management systems are to be sustainable, they require ongoing support from an overseeing institution to provide encouragement and motivation, monitoring, participatory planning, capacity building, and specialist technical assistance. If such support is not available, alternatives such as household water supplies and private sector service delivery should be considered.
A major problem worldwide is the potential loss of fisheries, forests, and water resources. Understanding of the processes
that lead to improvements in or deterioration of natural resources is limited, because scientific disciplines use different
concepts and languages to describe and explain complex social-ecological systems (SESs). Without a common framework to organize
findings, isolated knowledge does not cumulate. Until recently, accepted theory has assumed that resource users will never
self-organize to maintain their resources and that governments must impose solutions. Research in multiple disciplines, however,
has found that some government policies accelerate resource destruction, whereas some resource users have invested their time
and energy to achieve sustainability. A general framework is used to identify 10 subsystem variables that affect the likelihood
of self-organization in efforts to achieve a sustainable SES.
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.
Using data from India, we estimate the relationship between household wealth and children's school enrollment. We proxy wealth by constructing a linear index from asset ownership indicators, using principal-components analysis to derive weights. In Indian data this index is robust to the assets included, and produces internally coherent results. State-level results correspond well to independent data on per capita output and poverty. To validate the method and to show that the asset index predicts enrollments as accurately as expenditures, or more so, we use data sets from Indonesia, Pakistan, and Nepal that contain information on both expenditures and assets. The results show large, variable wealth gaps in children's enrollment across Indian states. On average a "rich" child is 31 percentage points more likely to be enrolled than a "poor" child, but this gap varies from only 4.6 percentage points in Kerala to 38.2 in Uttar Pradesh and 42.6 in Bihar.