Overview of groundwater for emergency use and human security

Abstract

Water resources and their management are critical to human security and are essential for achieving sustainable development (UN-Water 2013). According to UNDP (1994), human security is a people-centered concept and implies safety from both chronic and sudden threats or disruptions. Human security is composed of seven pillars: economic, food, health, environmental, personal, political, and community security (UNDP 1994), but other dimensions have since been suggested such as livelihood or energy security (O’Brian and Leichenko 2007), and further developments of the human security concept have been proposed (e.g., Barnett et al. 2010; O’Brian and Leichenko 2007; these two papers also include references to groundwater resources, although these are not a central discussion point). Most of the preceding dimensions depend on having access to sufficient freshwater of adequate quality. In many arid and semi-arid regions, groundwater resources represent the main source or an essential supplement to other sources of available freshwater and thus play an important role for everyday livelihoods and human security (e.g., Burke and Moench 2000; UNESCO 1999; UNESCO-WWAP 2003). Groundwater can play an equally important role in environmental disaster-related emergencies (Vrba and Verhagen 2011).