Urban Household Water Insecurity from the Margins: Perspectives from Northeast Brazil

Abstract

a Urban water security strategies commonly pivot around supply-side initiatives to mitigate scarcity, forecasted population growth, or anticipated climate change; yet, scholars have begun to expand urban water security scholarship by including alternative frameworks that incorporate equity into the analysis. Our study seeks to contribute to this equity turn by opening the investigative aperture on urban water security research in several aspects. We address the question of water security for whom, and turn our attention to the urban resident and household. We shift empirical focus to smaller urban centers in the Global South, and we develop a new assessment tool for water insecurity, the Household Water Insecurity Index (HWISI), to assess differences across the urban waterscape. We conducted this research in Forquilha (Cear a, Brazil), which represents an overlooked class of small urban centers common across Brazil's semiarid region. We draw on qualitative and quantitative data to describe household water insecurity using the HWISI. The prevalence of household water insecurity is variable, with a quarter of the population experiencing moderate to severe household water insecurity. In addition, analysis of the factors within the HWISI demonstrated how specific water insecurity domains push households across water insecurity thresholds.

Cross-sectional study to measure household water insecurity and its health outcomes in urban Mexico

“…This is an important finding because it supports the theory that the experience of water insecurity is shaped by multiple dimensions that may operate differently across populations in space and time. 67 This study demonstrates that although different water insecurity measures may be associated with the same health outcomes, certain dimensions of water insecurity may have stronger relationships with a given health outcome (eg, water worry and PSS; hygiene and diarrhoea). This finding suggests that shorter, construct-specific subscores, rather than the full 12-item HWISE Scale, may be a useful proxy for certain community-level and household-level health risks.…”

“…Reliance on unprotected sources in Torreón may convey a sense of security as the perception of arsenic exposure risk may be lowered even if other contaminant pathways arise through unprotected sources and requisite water storage. There are other strategies to address these differences, 5 such as a household water insecurity index, 67 regional scales 69 or use of subdomains, 72 which may be necessary to examine how water insecurity subscores correlate with health and other outcomes.…”

The role of water in environmental migration

“…Households will respond to punctuated and chronic water‐related triggers in one or multiple ways simultaneously or sequentially, and in the context of demographic, political‐economic, and socio‐ecological processes at multiple scales. Urban households are more likely to recalibrate water budgets within the household (e.g., Tomaz et al, 2020), whereas rural households are more likely to adjust agricultural water use and planting decisions (e.g., Bryan et al, 2013). In either case, these adaptations may be related to economic diversification strategies directly (by shifting labor to less water‐intensive jobs or crops) or indirectly (such as by limiting labor opportunities requiring hydration or regular laundering of uniforms).…”

A review of 80 assessment tools measuring water security

“…On the other hand, experiential scale‐based tools measure the present status of water security, with a recall period ranging from 1 week to 1 month (Jepson, Wutich, et al, 2017) or up to 4 months (Tomaz, Jepson, & de Oliveira Santos, 2020). Given this snapshot picture, researchers suggest conducting multiple surveys in different seasons or conducting a follow‐up survey if the effectiveness of particular interventions is part of the investigation.…”