Short report
Safe access to safe water in low income countries: Water fetching in current times

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2011.03.010Get rights and content

Abstract

A substantial portion of the world’s population does not have ready access to safe water. Moreover, obtaining water may involve great expense of time and energy for those who have no water sources in or near home. From an historical perspective, with the invention of piped water, fetching water has only recently become largely irrelevant in many locales. In addition, in most instances, wells and clean surface water were so close by that fetching was not considered a problem. However, population growth, weather fluctuations and social upheavals have made the daily chore of carrying water highly problematic and a public health problem of great magnitude for many, especially women, in the poor regions and classes of the world. In this paper, we consider gender differences in water carrying and summarize data about water access and carrying from 44 countries that participated in the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) program. Women and children are the most common water carriers, and they spend considerable time (many trips take more than an hour) supplying water to their households. Time is but one measure of the cost of fetching water; caloric expenditures, particularly during droughts, and other measures that affect health and quality of life must be considered. The full costs of fetching water must be considered when measuring progress toward two Millennium Development Goals – increasing access to safe drinking water and seeking an end to poverty.

Section snippets

Background

Almost thirty years after the United Nations proclaimed the 1980s to be the International Drinking-Water Supply and Sanitation Decade, more than one billion people still lack access to safe drinking water (Coles & Wallace, 2005). Improved water sources are unavailable to a substantial percentage of the population in developing countries and elsewhere (for example, Indian reservations in the southwest United States). Essential for survival, water plays an important role in the establishment and

Current estimates of water fetching by gender

UNICEF, in conjunction with local governments, began the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) program in 1995 to collect data by which to monitor the situation of children and women in developing countries. Questionnaires were developed in consultation with other UN organizations, interagency groups monitoring the Millennium Development Goals, interagency development groups, and the USAID-supported Demographic Health Surveys. The collaborative approach helped ensure comparability across

Perspectives on women and water

In recent years, two main perspectives – health and economic – have dominated research on women’s work in supplying water. Social networking and political participatory aspects of women in relation to water have garnered substantially less attention.

Water-borne diseases are common in developing countries, and the health perspective focuses largely on the consequences of using contaminated water for drinking and sanitation (World Health Organization and United Nations Children’s Fund Joint

Measuring water fetching and its effects

Water fetching reflects a social and health disparity of major proportion. Average daily per capita domestic water consumption ranges from 1 gallon in Mozambique and 4 gallons in Angola, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Haiti, Rwanda and Uganda to 150 gallons in the United States (Data360, n.d.; 2002 data). In recent years, there have been several approaches to measuring water fetching, none of them comprehensive. The next sections describe several constructs that may more fully capture the individual and

Neglected concerns

Future research on water fetching will be strengthened by considering largely ignored factors, ones that go beyond time, linear distance, caloric expenditures, and opportunity costs.

Road casualties are an important risk. Transportation infrastructure is poor in developing countries, especially in rural areas. Water fetching often involves walking on poorly designed and chaotic roadways (often the only place to walk), and pedestrians share the roadways with vehicles and cyclists. Injuries and

Implications for research

Research on the multiple impacts of fetching water on women’s lives is incomplete, and the lack of gender-disaggregated data – as well as data on related health risks – obscures a more complete understanding of the unequal burden (Ray, 2007). Attendees at a recent Expert Group Meeting organized by the UN-Water Decade Programme on Capacity Development stressed the need for gender-disaggregated data (Seager, 2008). Data from the MICS program are a step forward. Such efforts extend initial public

Conclusion

Water for domestic and agricultural use is indispensable for food security and public health. As climate change, population growth, and development affect water availability, internal as well as external cooperative efforts are essential (Barnaby, 2009, Gleick, 2000). Policies designed to improve infrastructure are needed to increase, not just access to water but, safe access to safe and reliable water or risk losing the health advantage of having a nearby water source (Caldwell et al., 2003,

Acknowledgments

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2009 meeting of the American Public Health Association.

References (25)

  • Data 360. (n.d.). Average water use per person per day. (data from 2002)....
  • Cited by (0)

    View full text