Elsevier

World Development

Volume 30, Issue 7, July 2002, Pages 1195-1210
World Development

Calculating a Water Poverty Index

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0305-750X(02)00035-9Get rights and content

Abstract

This paper provides discussion of ways in which an interdisciplinary approach can be taken to produce an integrated assessment of water stress and scarcity, linking physical estimates of water availability with socioeconomic variables that reflect poverty, i.e., a Water Poverty Index. It is known that poor households often suffer from poor water provision, and this results in a significant loss of time and effort, especially for women. By linking the physical and social sciences to address this issue, a more equitable solution for water allocation may be found. For the purpose of initiating discussion, a summary of different approaches to establishing a Water Poverty Index is discussed.

Introduction

Policies for development and environment are evolving as tools of behavioral change throughout the world, and it is now understood that an essential prerequisite to effective policy making is accurate monitoring backed up by rigorous interdisciplinary science. Water is essential for life, and an adequate water supply is a prerequisite for human and economic development. It has been recognized that human behavior can have an impact both on water, and on the global ecosystem, and that there is a need to regulate that behavior in order to stabilize and sustain our future (WCED, 1987). Global water resources are limited, and only through a more sustainable approach to water management, and more equitable and ecologically sensitive strategies of water allocation and use, can we hope to achieve the international development targets for poverty reduction that have been set for 2015 (DFID, 2000).

There is a considerable literature on the use of indicators (Anderson, 1991; DoE, 1996; Hammond, Adriaanse, Rodenburg, Bryant, & Woodward, 1995; Rennings & Wiggering, 1997; Rogers et al., 1997; Salameh, 2000; Streeten, 1996; World Bank, 1998). While many of these allow policy makers and funding agencies to monitor progress for environmental change or poverty elimination, those of the Committee for Development Policy of the United Nations are particularly of use. None, however, recognizes the unique importance of water to all forms of life. Without adequate and efficient water supplies, i.e., where there is “water poverty,” any measures to reduce income poverty are unlikely to be successful. In this paper, it is proposed that water poverty needs to be quantified in a universally accepted way, through the derivation of a “Water Poverty Index.” This index will enable progress toward development targets to be monitored, and water projects to be better targeted to meet the needs of the current generation, while securing water availability for the needs of future generations, as recommended in the Brundtland Report (WCED, 1987).

Effective accounting processes are an important component of any management strategy. To date, however, economic accounting in general does not address the issue of natural capital utilization in an appropriate way (Costanza, Cumberland, Daly, Goodland, & Norgaard, 1997; Daly, 1999). While some work has been done recently to design auditing systems for water resources (Batchelor, Rama Mohan Rao, & James, 2000) and other researchers have addressed the issue of incorporating water accounts into national accounting systems (Friend, 1993; Lange, 1998) systems of accounting for water use, both at a macro- and micro-level, are yet to be fully developed.

At present, national and regional policy makers seldom consider the time spent by women in subsistence households, and indeed, within the structure of the United Nations System of National Accounts, women's housework is rarely included. In developing regions, the burden of domestic water provision most acutely falls on women and children (Curtis, 1986), and in some areas, as much as 25% of women's productive time can be spent on water collection. This represents a significant cost in terms of household human capital entitlements (Carney, 1998; Scoones, 1998) but little has been done to quantify these real household costs, and even less to account for them explicitly in economic analyses. The objective of developing a Water Poverty Index is to produce a holistic policy tool, drawing on both the physical and social sciences, and having application throughout the world. It is hoped that the development of such an index will enable decision makers to target crosscutting issues in an integrated way, by identifying and tracking the physical, economic and social drivers which link water and poverty.

While global water resources may be finite, the same cannot be said of water demand. Growth in human populations is creating an increasing demand for water, and if, at the same time, if standards of living are to rise, water consumption per capita is also likely to rise. This means that water resource availability, or lack of it, is linked to economic and social progress, suggesting that development is likely to be influenced by how water resources are managed. At a national level, it can be seen that countries which have higher levels of income tend to have a higher level of water use, as can be demonstrated by the examples shown in Table 1.

Demand management is one of the real challenges faced by policy makers today. On a global scale, water for agriculture is by far the most important use, with domestic water requirements being just a fraction of the total. Even taking the very arid countries in the Middle East, this pattern still tends to occur, as shown in Table 2. While there is some scope for better management of domestic water, there is little doubt that better water management in agriculture is likely to have the greatest impact on water resource availability.

The complexity of the problem of water resource allocation can be illustrated by looking more closely at three countries in this region. For example, in Jordan, rapid industrialization and population growth has led to water demand being on the verge of exceeding water availability, and the high concentration of population around the capital city of Amman, has led to a significant rise in demand for domestic water (Allan & Karshenas, 1995), and in pumping water from regions hundreds of kilometers away. In Qatar, the almost total lack of rainfall means that agricultural development can be achieved only through the use of groundwater, and it is now known that the aquifer from which this is pumped, is likely to be depleted within 20–30 years. In addition, this groundwater is becoming heavily polluted by nitrates resulting from rapid urbanization and agricultural development (UNEP, 1987). Other typical pollution problems are demonstrated by the case of Syria, where inadequate sanitation and dumping of industrial wastes has led to significant ecological disruption in the Euphrates, Oronte and Barrada catchments (Biswas, 1994; Shuval, 1994). National water management problems are further confounded by overpumping of groundwater, giving rise to saltwater intrusion on the coastal plain. These and other issues highlight the importance of considering both ground and surface water when addressing the problem of water resource assessment, and in the development of the Water Poverty Index.

The patterns of water use illustrated in Tables 1 and 2 are found in most countries of the world, and as pressure on water resources increases, the need for new approaches to managing this use becomes more pressing. These could include the development of more efficient irrigation systems which minimize evaporative losses, more sustainable farming practices avoiding the production of “water thirsty” plants in semi-arid areas, dependence on fossil groundwater and other measures. Increased public awareness and the use of water pricing can promote less wastage of domestic and industrial water, and better systems of resource accounting will enable a reduction in the externalities associated with water use, both at a micro-economic and macro-economic level (CDP, 1989).

Following the debates at the second World Water Forum in The Hague in March 2000, it has become clear that despite improvements in water services in many places, there are still millions of people worldwide without access to sufficient water for domestic use. Possibly as much as half of the world's population lack adequate water for basic sanitation and hygiene. With a world water crisis of such epidemic proportions, it seems an immense task to manage water so that there is enough for people to drink, let alone for agricultural and industrial uses. It is clear that the time has come for more effective targeting of water provision. With limited resources, this targeting requires decisions to be made and priorities to be assessed so that water can be delivered to where it is most needed to meet the needs of human populations. The development of a Water Poverty Index is intended to help this process of identifying those areas and communities where water is most needed, enabling a more equitable distribution of water to be achieved.

Gleick, 1993, Gleick, 1997a, Gleick, 1997b, Gleick, 2000 has examined many aspects of water resources and entitlements, especially with respect to global security, and indeed, as highlighted in a keynote speech at the Pugwash1 conference in Cambridge (August 2000), the issue of poverty and its drivers is now attracting considerable attention from a security point of view. The widespread publication of global disparities in water accessibility in such meetings as the World Water Forum and the G8 ministerial conference in 1999 have also emphasized the need to address the problem of water management more effectively, both at a local and international scale. At a global level, the problems associated with future climate change also have serious implications for water availability (Strzepek, 2000; Strzepek, Yates, & ElQuosy, 1996).

The literature on poverty is so vast as to be impossible to list. Some of the key issues on poverty which have been examined include work on gender (Rosenhouse, 1989), definitions of poverty in the context of development (CDP, 2000; Sen, 1995; UNDP, 2000; van der Gaag, 1988), poverty thresholds (Orshansky, 1969), poverty measurement (Desai, 1995; Lipton, 1988; World Bank, 1996a) poverty and welfare (World Bank, 1998) poverty and food (Malseed, 1990) poverty and politics (Uvin, 1994) poverty and health (WHO, 1992), poverty and vulnerability (CDP, 1999) and many more issues. While a lot of these issues may touch on the importance of water, very few attempts make the link explicitly between water and poverty, although the WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Program does attempt to assess progress in the provision of clean water and sanitation.

Methods currently in use to assess poverty need to be considered in any attempt to link water resource assessments with poverty to form a Water Poverty Index. There are a number of approaches to this, including the Poverty Line, the Headcount Index, and the Poverty Gap. The Poverty Line is a consumption-based measure comprised of an element representing the minimum level of expenditure required for basic necessities, plus an extra amount for that required to participate in the everyday life of society. This varies considerably throughout the world, but for developing countries it is thought to range from $275 to $370 per capita per annum. This measure indicates that over one billion people fall below the poverty line, roughly one-third of the total population of developing countries. The Headcount Index expresses the number of poor, as defined by the poverty line, as a percentage of the total population. In a large country like China, a relatively low Headcount Index can actually mean very large number of people. The Poverty Gap is sometimes called the Average Income Shortfall, an assessment of the amount of money that would be necessary to bring every poor person up to the poverty line. This is expressed as the aggregate income shortfall of the poor, as a percentage of aggregate consumption.

All of these approaches are based on national income figures, and as averages, are not very representative of regional variations. As a result, they often fail to accurately represent the levels of poverty experienced in different communities. Importantly, measures of per capita income are recognized to be inadequate to represent human well-being. While money measures may provide some means of comparison of economic activity, they take no account of nonmonetary attributes of human well-being, nor of the value of women's household labor, nor indeed of depreciation of natural capital.

Since water is a key component of the natural capital entitlements of households (Scoones, 1998), and of healthy ecosystems, improved definition of water data, and its integration with economic accounting systems, is an important key to sustainability. This would need to be addressed in any holistic management tool, by including ecosystem water requirements as a component of the analytical framework used for the calculation of the Water Poverty Index.2

In the past, little attention has been given to the water needs of nature itself. Economic development has in most cases taken precedence, and numerous examples can be found where ecological disruption has resulted from water projects designed to increase agricultural or industrial production. These have occurred because knowledge of the complexities of ecosystems is limited, and values of the relevant environmental attributes have been ignored. Compounded by a scientific approach which has been specific rather than generic, to some extent at least, this has led to erroneous theories of growth economics. These theories, on which many development projects are founded, are based on understandings which:

  • ––suggest that man-made and natural capital can infinitely be substituted, and

  • ––ignore the constraints on production provided by the basic laws of thermodynamics (Daly, 1999).


Clearly, while man-made capital is generated from the depletion of natural resources (Daly, 1999), it can also be shown that certain natural resources cannot be reproduced by utilization of financial or physical capital. This refutes the concept of “perfect substitutability of factors of production” which is a basic assumption underlying the positions held even by eminent economists such as Beckerman (1995) and Simon and Khan (1984). Furthermore, the fact that money generated by exploitation of natural capital is accounted for in terms of “income streams” rather than “capital depletion,” brings about an inevitable undervaluation of such resources, and consequent policy failure.

The physical existence of entropy, as explained by the laws of thermodynamics, means that even the most efficient production system must produce waste. This underlines the fact that the idea of infinite resource recycling and substitution is physically impossible. The failure of growth theories to take account of these real world conditions is one of the reasons why many water projects developed in the past have failed to live up to expectations, and why numerous examples exist of inequitable development outcomes.

Highlighting the importance of taking more account of ecological and hydrological conditions, the Dublin Conference in 1991 (a preparatory meeting for UNCED, Rio, 1992), concluded that “since water sustains all life, effective management of water resources demands a holistic approach, linking social and economic development with protection of natural ecosystems” (ICWE, 1992). At the UNCED Conference itself, it was agreed that “in developing and using water resources, priority has to be given to the satisfaction of basic needs and the safeguarding of ecosystems” (Agenda 21, Chapter 18, 18.8). In areas where water shortages already exist, this situation has sometimes been presented as a conflict between water for people and water for nature. This ignores the fact that the global ecosystem provides our life-support system, and as such, its integrity needs to be maintained, not merely for ecocentric reasons, but equally for anthropocentric ones, as it is the direct and indirect benefits of functioning ecosystems which maintain human life-support systems. Indeed, in many parts of the world, natural resources produced by healthy ecosystems provide livelihood support for millions of poor people, so a balance needs to be struck between allocating water for people's direct needs (for domestic use, industry, and agriculture) and for their indirect needs, through the numerous and as yet unquantified goods and services provided by functioning ecosystems (Acreman, 1998).

One example of how this has been incorporated into national water policy is illustrated by the new water law of South Africa, whose Principle 9 states that:

The quantity, quality and reliability of water required to maintain the ecological functions on which humans depend shall be reserved so that the human use of water does not individually or cumulatively compromise the long term sustainability of aquatic and associated ecosystems.

This shows how the national government of South Africa has adopted a very proactive approach toward the principles of sustainable water management as outlined in Agenda 21, and as such, are farther advanced in this respect than most other countries of the world.

The question of identifying and quantifying the “demand” for water by functioning ecosystems is an important part of the research agenda for water management. Currently, there is no simple measure of ecosystem health in terms of effective hydrological functioning, and little is known about how much water different ecosystems need. In a recent study, a figure of 25% of available water was used as a proxy for this environmental demand (Seckler, 2000; Seckler, Amarasinghe, Molden, de Silva, & Barker, 1998). While such an approach recognizes the need to include environmental demand, it does not go far enough to examine the fact that different ecosystems will have different water requirements, and these will vary across the seasons.

On the other hand, different ecosystems perform different functions (Dickenson & Murphy, 1998), each having its own role to play in natural catchment processes. Almost all natural ecosystems can perform valuable hydrological functions, such as water purification, flood control, habitat provision and groundwater recharge, and many of these can help to reduce both water stress and poverty. Identification of the water requirements of different ecosystems is clearly an important prerequisite to the achievement of sustainable water management, and as such, must be placed high on the research agenda.

Today, in many cases, water poverty is increased by ecosystem degradation, and as a result, any index of water poverty should aim to include the status of ecosystems that help sustain levels of water availability. As a result, the newly established IUCN Commission on Ecosystem Management (among others) is trying to address this issue, and as an end user of this work, it is anticipated that eventually, the Water Poverty Index will incorporate a measure of ecological water demand, enabling development decisions to be made which explicitly take this constraint into account.

Section snippets

CONVENTIONAL ASSESSMENTS OF WATER RESOURCES

Since the 1970s, the need to assess water resource availability has been recognized. A number of attempts have been made since then to estimate water supplies, both globally and regionally, and just some of them are outlined here.

INDICATORS AND INDEX NUMBERS

The use of indices as policy tools began in the 1920s (Edgeworth, 1925; Fisher, 1922). An index number is a measure of a quantity relative to a base period. Indices are a statistical concept, providing an indirect way of measuring a given quantity or state, effectively a measure which allows for comparison over time. Key issues which have to be addressed in the construction of any index are:

  • ––choice of components,

  • ––sources of data,

  • ––choice of formula,

  • ––choice of base period.


Apart from these

SOME APPROACHES TO CALCULATING A WATER POVERTY INDEX

As can be summarized from the above, a number of methods could be used to produce a Water Poverty Index. For such a tool to be widely accepted and adopted, it would need to be derived in a participatory and inclusive manner. Its calculation would need to be transparent, and it would need to be a tool which could be freely and easily used by all countries, at various scales. As such, its implementation would need to be preceded by a period of consultative conceptualization, followed by a period

IMPLEMENTING THE WATER POVERTY INDEX

The above examples illustrate that the development of a Water Poverty Index is something which needs to be carefully thought out. It is obviously important to include issues such as physical water availability, water quality and ecological water demand in the WPI, along with social and economic measures of poverty, but it is essential to recognize the importance of institutional issues as they impact on water access, and to ensure that some measure of this is included in the structure of the

CONCLUSION

There has been a considerable amount of data collected about both water and poverty. One of the key features of the Water Poverty Index is that it will make use of some of these in a practical way. Examples of the type of socioeconomic datasets becoming available for numerous countries around the world is provided by the work of the World Bank's Large Scale Monitoring System (World Bank, 1996b), and the Joint Monitoring Program (WHO/UNICEF, 2000), which has generated considerable data relating

Acknowledgements

The funding for this work has been provided by the UK Department for International Development, contract number IUDDC24. The views here do not necessarily represent those of DFID. Contributions to the development of this paper have been made by the participants in the WPI workshop held in May 2001 in Arusha, Tanzania, including J. Meigh, P. Lawrence, W. Cosgrove, J. Delli Priscoli, A. Allan, R. Schulze, M. Samad, J. King, C. Hutton, M. Acreman, S. Milner, E. Tate, S. Mlote, R. Calow, I. Smout

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