Access to water: inequalities reinforced by climate change

Four bil­lion people live at least one month a year with severe water short­ages¹. While the Earth’s fresh­wa­ter resources are the­or­et­ic­ally suf­fi­cient to sup­ply the world’s pop­u­la­tion, the fact that they are unevenly dis­trib­uted across the globe partly explains these short­ages. The stakes are high: the water crisis is one of the five biggest risks iden­ti­fied in the World Eco­nom­ic Forum’s risk report². Access to good qual­ity water helps to ensure live­li­hoods, human well-being, socio-eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment, pre­serves eco­sys­tems and a cli­mate of peace and polit­ic­al stability.

In 2023, the World Resources Insti­tute³ shows that 25 coun­tries – home to a quarter of the world’s pop­u­la­tion – face extreme water stress every year. Qatar, Oman, Leban­on, Kuwait, Cyprus and oth­ers are con­sum­ing more than 80% of their avail­able reserves. “How­ever, we need to be care­ful about the dif­fer­ence between avail­ab­il­ity and access to water,” points out Mar­ine Colon. “Access to drink­ing water requires infra­struc­ture to col­lect, treat, store, and dis­trib­ute water. It also requires organ­isa­tions and an insti­tu­tion­al frame­work that guar­an­tees the sus­tain­ab­il­ity of the ser­vice provided. Today, the lack of infra­struc­ture and the fail­ure of water ser­vices are the main obstacles to access to water”.

Water insec­ur­ity, unlike water short­age, con­siders the avail­ab­il­ity of the resource, but also access to dis­tri­bu­tion ser­vices, suf­fi­cient qual­ity, and appro­pri­ate gov­ernance. “Tech­nic­al solu­tions exist, such as desal­in­a­tion plants,” points out Stéphanie Dos San­tos. “Desert coun­tries with fin­an­cial resources have no prob­lem with access to water.” Some regions of the United States, Aus­tralia and south­ern Europe have major water defi­cits, but water insec­ur­ity is low there because of good gov­ernance, qual­ity, and access­ib­il­ity. Con­versely, water avail­ab­il­ity is rel­at­ively good in many parts of Africa, but insec­ur­ity is high.

Cli­mate change is clearly going to exacer­bate inequalities

Since 2015, the Mem­ber States of the UN have com­mit­ted to meet­ing 17 Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment Goals (SDGs) by 2030: uni­ver­sal and equit­able access to safe drink­ing water at an afford­able cost is one of them⁴. The situ­ation has improved since then. The pro­por­tion of the pop­u­la­tion bene­fit­ing from safe drink­ing water has ris­en from 69% to 73% by 2022. But no region of the world is on track to meet the UN tar­get – only 32 coun­tries are on track, 78 are pro­gress­ing too slowly and access to water is declin­ing in 16 coun­tries. Des­pite the com­mit­ment of gov­ern­ments, in 2022, 2.2 bil­lion people will still not have access to safe drink­ing water⁵.

As for basic drink­ing water sup­ply ser­vices, 703 mil­lion people are still deprived of them. “These inter­na­tion­al indic­at­ors assess access to water dis­tri­bu­tion facil­it­ies only, without tak­ing into account the qual­ity of the water,” adds Stéphanie Dos San­tos. “They over­es­tim­ate the pro­por­tion of the pop­u­la­tion with access to water.” For Mar­ine Colon, these indic­at­ors, pub­lished each year by the joint UNICEF/World Health Organ­isa­tion (WHO) mon­it­or­ing pro­gramme, have provided con­tinu­ous, uni­ver­sal mon­it­or­ing since 2000: “They should be treated with cau­tion, but they do give an order of magnitude.”

Some parts of the pop­u­la­tion are much more affected by water insec­ur­ity. For example, access to drink­ing water is highly cor­rel­ated with a coun­try’s income. By 2022, in less developed coun­tries, only 60% of the pop­u­la­tion will have access to basic drink­ing water ser­vices, and 35% to basic san­it­a­tion ser­vices. Anoth­er obser­va­tion is that the infra­struc­ture needed to provide water is more avail­able in towns than in rur­al areas (with the excep­tion of Bangladesh, Bhutan, the Turks and Cai­cos Islands and Costa Rica). In 2022, 62% of people liv­ing in rur­al areas will have access to water that is man­aged safely. This fig­ure rises to 81% for urb­an populations.

“It’s a ques­tion of installing infra­struc­ture, but also of main­tain­ing it,” explains Mar­ine Colon. “The 1981–1990 Water Dec­ade showed the lack of atten­tion paid to the oper­a­tion and main­ten­ance of infra­struc­tures: 40% to 60% of install­a­tions are gen­er­ally out of order in rur­al areas⁶. It is vital to set up man­age­ment sys­tems to ensure the sus­tain­ab­il­ity of infra­struc­ture – train­ing, sup­ply chains for spare parts, equip­ment, fund­ing mech­an­isms, etc.” The good cov­er­age of urb­an pop­u­la­tions masks oth­er disparities.

The good cov­er­age of urb­an pop­u­la­tions masks oth­er dis­par­it­ies. “People liv­ing in inform­al set­tle­ments find it dif­fi­cult, if not impossible, to claim access to a water net­work”, says Mar­ine Colon .This is par­tic­u­larly the case in sub-Saha­ran Africa, where the major­ity of the urb­an pop­u­la­tion lives in these neigh­bour­hoods. Demo­graph­ic growth, chan­ging life­styles, increas­ing pol­lu­tion and accel­er­at­ing urb­an­isa­tion will con­tin­ue to exacer­bate these inequal­it­ies⁷.

Anoth­er large part of the pop­u­la­tion is largely affected by the lack of access to water: women. World­wide, 1.8 bil­lion people col­lect water out­side their homes, and in 7 out of 10 house­holds, women are respons­ible for this task. “Access to water is at the heart of all devel­op­ment issues: school­ing, poverty, gender,” adds Stéphanie Dos San­tos. “When a child has queued all night at a col­lec­tion point, or gets up early to fetch water, they can­’t go to school.” This par­tic­u­larly affects women and girls in sub-Saha­ran Africa and Cent­ral and South Asia. The time spent per house­hold col­lect­ing water var­ies from 55 minutes in Malawi to less than one minute in the Domin­ic­an Repub­lic. In coun­tries where water col­lec­tion takes the longest, women are more respons­ible for this task: they can spend up to 10 times more time than men (Bangladesh, Chad, Gam­bia, Guinea-Bis­sau and Malawi).

In the future, the pic­ture will be even bleak­er. “Cli­mate change is clearly going to exacer­bate inequal­it­ies,” asserts Mar­ine Colon. The avail­ab­il­ity of water resources will decrease, adding a bil­lion people to the list of those liv­ing under extreme water stress by 2050.m In addi­tion to the increas­ing scarcity of water in arid zones, oth­er regions will be affected by a rise in extreme events.

“In Abid­jan, the author­it­ies are con­sid­er­ing sup­ply­ing the city with water from a lagoon,” explains Stéphanie Dos San­tos. “How­ever, the avail­ab­il­ity of water dur­ing extreme rain­fall is an issue, because of the con­tam­in­a­tion of the water when the soil is washed away.” Oth­er reper­cus­sions con­cern water dis­tri­bu­tion net­works. “Extreme events are likely to deteri­or­ate exist­ing infra­struc­tures, as happened dur­ing the floods in Derna (Libya) in 2023, and some infra­struc­tures will no longer be suit­able,” explains Mar­ine Colon. “In some Afric­an towns, the level of bore­holes is now becom­ing insuf­fi­cient, or water intakes from reser­voirs are being left in the open air.”

At a time when con­flicts of use are already put­ting con­sid­er­able pres­sure on water resources, cli­mate change will exacer­bate this effect. Demand for water is set to increase by 20–25% between now and 2050. It will explode in sub-Saha­ran Africa, rising by more than 150%. The pro­por­tion of dis­placed pop­u­la­tions set­tling in inform­al set­tle­ments will increase as a res­ult of cli­mate change, some­times pro­vok­ing new con­flicts. “In south­ern Tunisia in par­tic­u­lar, we are already see­ing con­flicts over the use of water between the nat­ive pop­u­la­tion and the dis­placed pop­u­la­tion”, says Mar­ine Colon. Stephanie Dos San­tos con­cludes: “Invest­ment and good water gov­ernance are essential.”

Anaïs Maréchal