Spatial inequality in water access and water use in South Africa

Abstract

The importance of measuring inequalities in sustainable development is reflected in the requirement to disaggregate national data for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In this paper, piped water access, water use and water stress are mapped and reported at national, provincial, district, municipal, town and ward levels, and urban and rural areas. The results show that although 45% of the population has water access in their dwelling this ranges from 0.07% to 100% at ward level, with a high level of inequality (Gini index of 0.36). National per capita water use is 208 litres per person per day (l/c/d) but ranges from 8 l/c/d to 2,414 l/c/d at town level, with a Gini index of 0.27. The analysis shows that social factors, such as water access and income, and not natural factors, such as rainfall or runoff, have the greatest influence on per capita water use. The paper provides the first in-depth analysis of per capita water use at the local level across South Africa and suggests new water indicators that could support equitable allocation of water resources and SDG reporting.

Growth of the Decision Tree: Advances in Bottom‐Up Climate Change Risk Management

“…), and within populations (e.g., Wilk and Jonsson ; Cole et al. ) is rarely rigorously quantified and carefully considered in planning applications. Exceptions exist (such as the attention given to the upstream–downstream distribution of benefits and costs in recent studies of the Great Lakes, International Joint Commission ), but have not yet appreciably impacted standard practice.…”

“…The remaining two components were acknowledged as important accounts for displaying additional information but would not be the principal factors in final decision-making" (Eisel et al 1982). Therefore, though it is fundamental to the values of most institutions undertaking water-resource system planning and management, equitable distribution of water, both temporally (e.g., Jeuland and Whittington 2014;Rockstr€ om et al 2014), and within populations (e.g., Wilk and Jonsson 2013;Cole et al 2018) is rarely rigorously quantified and carefully considered in planning applications. Exceptions exist (such as the attention given to the upstream-downstream distribution of benefits and costs in recent studies of the Great Lakes, International Joint Commission 2012), but have not yet appreciably impacted standard practice.…”

Measuring the Impact of Environment on the Health of Large Cities

“…Luh and Bartram (2016) [ 6 ] recently analyzed progress on drinking water and sanitation in 73 countries and found that improvements in these services do not appear to be correlated with socioeconomic characteristics, but are more likely the result of policies and governance. Furthermore, cities all over the world are facing growing concerns of water stress in the face of population growth, rapid urbanization, and climate change [ 7 ]. Water demand is growing even as freshwater supplies are declining rapidly.…”

Women’s vulnerability to climate-related risks to household water security in Centre-East, Burkina Faso

“…Although interventions designed to improve household water security are assumed to benefit residents equally, differential and unequal outcomes in areas where access to services has improved have been noted in a number of cases. This may result from a range of social, economic or institutional barriers (Cole et al, 2017;Nicol et al, 2018), such as where poor households remain locked into poor quality and inconvenient services (Carrard et al, 2019). Van Houweling et al (2017 report that in rural Mozambique the provision of handpumps reinforced existing differences in political affiliation in communities, reinforcing social divides.…”