Water Injustices Research Articles

Water Matters: Water Insecurity and Inadequate Sanitation in the U.S./Mexico Border Region

Over the past three decades, much progress has been made in providing water and sewer service to many colonias in the U.S./Mexico border region. However, 134,419 people living in 604 colonias in the border region do not have access to public water systems and/or sewer services. Most of the remaining communities who lack water and sanitation service are relatively small, remote, and isolated, which makes providing services very expensive or perhaps even impossible. We present here two case studies that are representative of these smaller communities, still lacking in water and/or sewer services and are challenged to realize the 2030 Agenda goal of “availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all.” The two case studies are water insecure communities that are predominantly Hispanic and impoverished, one that is reliant on hauled water for household use (Las Pampas), and the other that is reliant on old, failing septic tanks for sanitation (Bejar Estates). Our objective in the case studies was to assess the public health and quality-of-life impacts of water insecurity as indicators of environmental injustice. We argue that though water and sanitation infrastructure is a significant contributor to addressing inequities in the border region, much remains to be done to achieve water justice in this challenging region. The “soft path to water” might be the water policy that can address the water injustice remaining in the U.S./Mexico border region.

Sociospatial Dimensions of Water Injustice: The Distribution of Surface Water Toxic Releases in California’s Bay-Delta

Previous water injustice research focuses predominantly on inequities and power relations in water use, management, governance, and rights. This article charts a new research direction with a case study of the unequal distribution of surface water toxic release hazard levels across census block groups in California’s Bay-Delta region in the year 2000. The article draws on secondary data and geographic information systems, as well as spatial regression analyses to test intersectional environmental inequality hypotheses regarding the determinants of surface water cumulative areal-weighted modeled hazard scores (CAWMHS)—a new environmental health hazard indicator derived in this study from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Risk-Screening Environmental Indicators database. Spatial error regression models demonstrate that black disadvantage and isolated Latino disadvantage are the strongest and positive demographic determinants of surface water CAWMHS, net of other factors. Findings have scholarly and practical implications for environmental inequality and water injustice research and policy.

The perception of users about the impacts of water rationing on their household routines

Abstract In water scarcity situations, water rationing is a management measure taken in order to ensure equitable access to water. The current study presents some factors that contribute to a situation of water injustice in Campina Grande, a city located in the Brazilian semiarid region, which has been facing a new drought cycle since 2012. The water supply conditions in the households and the users' perceptions about the impacts on their water use routines were monitored for 6 months. Two variables were considered: household income and water shortage risk. Among the main conclusions, the following stand out: (1) the higher the household income is, the higher the water storage capacity and the lower the impacts on the household routines; (2) the poorest sections of the population tend to naturalize the restrictive impacts of the water rationing since they have experienced and lived in a permanent state of water saving.

Operational manifestations of institutional dysfunction in post-apartheid South Africa

At the centre of the water law reform process initiated by the first democratic government of the Republic of South Africa (RSA) lay the challenge of transforming away from apartheid water injustices. Reform culminated in the promulgation of new legislation, regarded internationally as ambitious and forward-thinking legislation reflective of the broad aims of integrated water resource management (IWRM). However, implementation of this legislation has been challenging. This paper analyses institutional dysfunction in water management in the Sundays River Valley Municipality (Eastern Cape Province, RSA). A transdisciplinary approach is taken in addressing the failure of national law and policy to enable the delivery of effective water services in post-apartheid RSA. A case study is used to explore interventions to promote effective water supply, locating these interventions and policies within the legislative structures and frameworks governing the water sector. We suggest that fine-grained institutional analysis together with learning from persistent iterative, adaptive practice, with principled goals intact, offers a pragmatic and achievable alternative to grand-scale policy change.

Feminist Solidarity? Women's Engagement in Politics and the Implications for Water Management in the Darjeeling Himalaya

This article explores the motivations of a diverse group of women in the Himalayan region of Darjeeling district in India to engage (or not) in politics, and discusses how women, like men, are vulnerable to power and politics. In Darjeeling, class, ethnicity, and other divides are accentuated by unresolved, decades-long identity-based political conflicts that also obscure practical everyday needs and challenges. This defines which women engage in the political domain and, in the dominantly patriarchal political space, how these women relate to the region's enduring water challenges. In such a setting, it would be ideal to wish for solidarity among women that would overcome class and ethnic divisions and individual political aspirations, making space for gendering political causes and practical challenges. Such solidarity would be especially pertinent in the Eastern Himalaya, given the region's projected climate vulnerability and fragile democracy. However, reality is far removed from development discourse and policy which suggests an assumed camaraderie among mountain women: an imagined empathy and solidarity in relation both to environmental causes and concerns and the practice of equitable power and politics. In looking at how a diverse group of women in varying positions of power and powerlessness in Darjeeling District are unable, reluctant, or simply uninterested in addressing critical water injustices experienced by some, this paper calls for retrospection on both gender–environment myths and gender–politics fictions.

Tribal communities, the forests, the fisher folk and the river: whither water justice?

Excessive exploitation of and skewed access to dwindling water resources raise serious water justice concerns. Environmental justice movements and related literature have raised critical questions regarding the unequal distribution of the costs and benefits of a development paradigm that is founded on excessive exploitation and appropriation of natural resources. This paper explores the growing relevance of a water justice framework that addresses both the social and ecological aspects of water use and appropriation, with reference to a four-decade long water conflict over the Chaliyar River in Kerala, South India. It highlights how ecosystem degradation and denial of justice go hand in hand. The paper argues that the framing and articulation of the conflict in a partisan manner led to the glossing over of certain critical features, thus preventing a full view of water injustices. It also failed to inform subsequent policies and practices in this regard.

Water injustices and potential remedies in indigenous rural contexts: A water justice analysis

This paper examines Indigenous water rights in rural and remote Australia and how water justice seems to be elusive in many of these spaces. The purpose of this literature review is to link water justice theory and practices to the way different water cultures are valued in Australia while simultaneously critiquing the water justice movement. This paper situates the notion of water justice as a specific kind of environmental justice to cater for the unique qualities that define this resource. In doing so, this paper draws on Schlosberg’s (2004) conception of environmental justice with its trivalent approach that describes the following three ‘circles of concern’: recognition of difference, plurality of participation, and finally equitable distribution of resources and costs and benefits. This framework provides that if the first two ‘circles of concern’ are not in existence in a natural resource management process, then inequitable distribution of that resource is a likely outcome. This paper presents two areas where water injustices exist in the context of Indigenous rural and remote Australia. The first relates to how Indigenous rights to water have been inadequately recognized and the second presents empirical data on water supply and sanitation in rural and remote Indigenous communities that demonstrates ongoing dilemmas around securing this basic human right. The undervaluing of cultural differences relating to water is argued to be antecedent to the injustice manifest in poor water supply and sanitation provision for Indigenous rural contexts. This paper does not attempt to survey the body of ethnographic work on society-water relations in rural and remote Indigenous Australian contexts but reviews the gaps in current mainstream acknowledgement of Indigenous water cultures. In exploring water justice in rural and remote Indigenous Australia, this paper offers a novel approach to a dilemma more frequently analysed solely as a health development issue.