Access to water in urban areas - Part 2

Last week I blogged about the importance of physical factors in determining renewable water resource availability and access within urban areas in Africa. In this blog I am turning to socio-economic/ political factors.

Although I previously stressed the importance of water resource availability, figure 1 shows the relationship between the percentage of the population with access to an adequate amount of safe water (a) and access to sanitary facilities (b) against renewable freshwater resources available for selected African nations. It is apparent that there is in fact, on a holistic level, no real relationship between the two variables with the trend lines in fact suggesting a negative linear relationship. Egypt and Algeria (fig. 1a), the countries with the highest access to safe water have very low renewable water resources, 34 and 442 cmpc (cubic meters per capita) respectively. Madagascar and the Democratic Republic of the Congo have water resources of 21139 and 18101 cmpc yet access of just 47% and 45%.  

Figure 1: a) The relationship between access to safe water and renewable fresh water resource, b) access to sanitation and renewable freshwater resources. Data source: *

Figure 2 shows percentage access to safe water (a) and sanitation (b) against GDP per capita. The relationships appear statistically stronger with both access to water and sanitation showing similar positive linear trends. As GDP increases so does access with comparatively wealthier countries appearing to have greater access. For access to water in particular there appears to be a threshold of around $900 after which the highest levels of access are observed. This data suggests that rather than physical factors and the availability of renewable resources, access is instead determined by socio-economic conditions

Figure 2: a) Th e relationship between access to safe water and GDP per capita. b) access to sanitation and GDP per capita. Data source: *

A study in the early 2000's revisited earlier work on urban water use in East Africa (Drawers of water) providing analysis on changing usage patters over a 30 year period (Thompson et al. 2000). The paper found the most important factor affecting urban water use was whether or not households had access to a functioning piped system. Thus, in 1967 (fig. 3) those who access to piped sources consumed on average 124.3 litres per day whereas those without a piped source used only 15.4 litres. By 1997 the consumption gap between piped and unpiped sources had narrowed significantly. Although this may appear positive it is in fact mainly as a result of declining per capita water usage in piped households to 64.2 litres although unpiped usage did increase slightly to 24.3 litres per day. The changes in daily per capita water usage were not as a result of changing availability of renewable freshwater resources or physical factors or major improvements in unpiped systems. Instead the authors argue that the closing consumption gap is mostly a consequence of the collapse of municipal piped systems. A similar story is found with the reliability of piped supplies with in 1967 practically all piped households receiving 24 hour access. In 1997 this had fallen to only 56%. This is again blamed on socio-economic factors such as lack of system maintenance and increasing stresses on existing network capacity. Considering the scale of additional stresses resulting from a rapidly growing population, the authors finish by underlining the importance of governance in ensuring access to water again echoing the importance of socio-economic and political factors.

Figure 3: Per capita water used by type (litres per day). Source: Thompson et al. (2000)

Although the fundamental availability of freshwater resources is dependent upon physical factors and the distribution of freshwater resources, this blog has has highlighted the idea that there are equally important relationships at play. The relationship between socio-economic and political factors and access. These ideas I will focus in on in much greater detail in some of my future blogs. However, my next blog aims to look behind the metrics. I will investigate what access to water really means and whether the term 'access' is in fact rather misleading.

* Data sources:  World Resources Institute (2000); Population, Resources, Environment and Development Databank (v. 3.0), United Nations ESA/P/WP.170 (January 28, 2002)