Political ecology of household water security among the urban poor in Malawi

Abstract

This paper examines strategies used by the poor in urban Malawi in their struggles to ensure sufficient and continuous water supply for domestic and business purposes in a context where even though the state is the major provider of water, exorbitant tariffs mean that most people remain utterly excluded from or tenuously connected to the official grid. Using Mzuzu in northern Malawi as a case study, and applying theoretical perspectives grounded in political ecology, the findings of qualitative research (n = =52) conducted in Mzuzu indicate that the urban poor use a variety of contingent sources of water to augment supply from the ‘public’ water supply system. The findings also show that social ties and institutional affiliations operating outside of market relations provide an important avenue for ensuring adequate water supply. These non-market factors include, but are not limited to, blood relations, fictive kinship ties, membership and/or participation in civil society networks, ethnic affinities, and moral sentiments of need. The paper argues that, while the urban poor are themselves marginalized, the social and spatial strategies they pursue to access water are not necessarily inclusive. By shedding light on how the urban poor tactfully use these strategies to build spatial and intergenerational access to water, this study contributes to a better understanding of the non-market dynamics that provide an escape for the urban poor marginally integrated into the ‘public’ water supply system. The paper extends the applicability of political ecology beyond its traditional agrarian context to the realm of water politics in urban settings in the developing world