The Socioeconomic Dimensions of Water Scarcity in Urban and Rural Mexico: A Comprehensive Assessment of Sustainable Development

Abstract

Mexico faces severe water scarcity due to population growth, industrial activities, and climate change. The arid and semidesert conditions prevalent in northern Mexico, particularly in Nuevo Leon, significantly accentuate the challenges associated with water scarcity. This region is vulnerable to water scarcity due to minimal rainfall, recurrent droughts, and the increasing pressure of water demand from the densely populated Monterrey. We examined the disparities that contribute to water poverty by comparing water scarcity between rural and urban populations in Nuevo Leon. The results revealed significant contrasts in water scarcity between the two populations, indicating that different factors contribute to water poverty based on regional, territorial, and cultural characteristics. We selected the water poverty index (WPI) as an evaluation metric due to its inherent compatibility with available data sources, which facilitates its application to stakeholders and ensures comparability with other regions. This study contributes to studies on water scarcity assessment by addressing a critical limitation of the WPI. We compared three weighting methods—equal weight, principal component analysis (PCA), and analytic hierarchy process (AHP)—and identified that PCA and AHP demonstrated a superior performance compared to the standard methodology. These findings underscore the importance of considering region-specific conditions, as well as socioeconomic disparities between rural and urban populations and their role in vulnerability to water scarcity in calculating water poverty. These insights provide valuable information for customized solutions to regional challenges, representing leading actions toward sustainable development.

Assessing the Operational Capability of Disaster and Emergency Management Resources: Using Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP)

“…AHP is particularly useful in scenarios fraught with uncertainty and multiple criteria, finding wide application across government, business, construction, healthcare, and education sectors. In the realm of disaster and emergency management, it aids in areas like disaster preparedness [10,38], emergency response [39,40], risk management and resilience assessment [41][42][43], sustainability assessment [44] and emergency supply chain risk analysis [30,45].…”

Assessing the Operational Capability of Disaster and Emergency Management Resources: Using Analytic Hierarchy Process

“…AHP is particularly useful in scenarios fraught with uncertainty and multiple criteria, finding wide application across government, business, construction, healthcare, and education sectors. In the realm of disaster and emergency management, it aids in areas like disaster preparedness [10,39], emergency response [40,41], risk management and resilience assessment [42][43][44], sustainability assessment [45], and emergency supply chain risk analysis [46,47].…”

Food System vs. Sustainability: An Incompatible Relationship in Mexico

“…In addition, the country is currently experiencing the worst environmental crisis ever reported [7,8], which has been repeatedly associated with the current food systems and their unsustainability [9]. Food systems comprise a comprehensive spectrum of stakeholders and their interconnected value-enhancing endeavors in producing, aggregating, processing, distributing, consuming, and disposing of food items derived from agriculture, forestry, or fisheries.…”