Inclusive water poverty index: a holistic approach for helping local water and sanitation services planning

Abstract

This paper addresses two approaches to guiding the inclusion of the poor and vulnerable in clean water and sanitation programmes in the framework of Sustainable Development Goals. It proposes an operational and adapted participatory approach for identifying the poorest and most vulnerable, which has become a central interest for inclusive development policies worldwide post Millennium Development Goals. Then, it proposes an inclusive water poverty index for the inclusion of the poor and vulnerable. This index, with six components, materializes the spatial and temporal equity in the distribution of water and sanitation services through a given district or municipality, particularly in developing countries.

Trend Analysis of Water Poverty Index for Assessment of Water Stress and Water Management Polices: A Case Study in the Hexi Corridor, China

“…In this paper, we apply the Water Poverty Index (WPI), which has been tested in a plethora of studies elsewhere, and capture a comprehensive overview of water management challenges in different study regions (e.g., [10,13,16,17,[25][26][27]). To apply WPI in the Hexi corridor and to investigate the water poverty situation, five components of water management are considered (i.e., resources, access, capacity, use, and environment).…”

“…In this paper, the indicators of the water situation and their sub-components were selected after a careful review of the published literature [10,14,17,[19][20][21][22]24,[28][29][30][31][32] and the primary measures of polices applied in the study area. These measures (shown in Table 1) were selected as they are expected to moderate the changes in water resource utilization, population, cultivated land, irrigation facilities, farmer livelihood, and eco-environment within the study basins.…”

“…A study by Chen et al [38] used the WPI framework to calculate the water poverty index for the Shiyang watershed region from 2001 to 2010, showing a weakening tendency of water pressures. Kharrazi et al [17] indicated that the efficiency of the ecosystem water services of the middle reaches of the Heihe River Basin has increased from 2000 to 2009 through Ecological Network Analysis. Though different indicators or models were chosen, the present research paper on water pressure rankings in the three basins and trends in the WPI for the SYRB are consistent with previous research works.…”

“…In its various forms, the WPI has broadly been used to manage water resources to ensure a sustainable future [16]. Precisely, the WPI has been applied in many research works; for example, from the viewpoint of community to local perspectives [14,17,18], regional and basin levels [11,[19][20][21][22][23], and national and international perspectives [8][9][10]24]. In most of these studies, the WPI has been classified into five major components: water resources, water access, use, capacity (social and economic), and water-related environmental quality.…”

“…Accordingly, the application of this index shows that if the WPI can be computed at a reasonable time interval, it could be utilized to monitor the developmental progress within the respective region [14]. In view of its practical importance, the WPI has attracted considerable research attention from policymakers, development agencies, and government professionals working in water resources management [8,9,11,17,18,21]. However, in the context of the basins studied within the Hexi Corridor (China) considered in this paper, the utility of the WPI for decision-making is yet to be investigated.…”