Water poverty in the context of climate change: a case study from Karnali river basin in Nepal Himalaya

ABSTRACT

It has long been recognized that there is a link between sustainable development, poverty and consistent access to useable water. Increased population is requiring more water and changing climate is altering the hydrological cycle making the water less accessible at the time when it is required. Combining the measurement of water availability and the socioeconomic capacity towards its access gives new insights in the fields of water resources management and poverty alleviation, which ultimately address the agenda of sustainable development. This paper customizes the water poverty index (WPI) indicators to encompass the climatic extremes and social settings to analyse the water stresses to the community people and their capacity to manage the water extremes focusing on the water availability in climatic variability condition in Karnali river basin in western Nepal. The indicators of the WPI were based on the multiple aspects of water focusing to water quantity and availability. The WPI is not only a useful tool to monitor progress; but it can even be used to identify areas of greatest need, thereby enabling prioritization of action in the water sector.

KEYWORDS:

• Water poverty
• climate
• Karnali
• Nepal
• socioeconomic

Acknowledgements

This paper is a part of the projects listed under ‘Funding’ section. Similarly, we would like to express our sincere gratitude to Department of Hydrology and Meteorology (DHM)-Nepal for providing the climate and hydrological data, and the people of the Karnali basin for participating in our survey. The views and interpretations in this publication are those of the authors and are not necessarily attributable to the institutions mentioned above.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

J. Panthi http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9410-8244

K. R. Khatiwada http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8880-3013

M. L. Shrestha http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6696-9231

Additional information

Funding

The authors would like to express the cordial thanks to Asia Pacific Network for Global Change Research (APN) for funding support to the projects ‘Runoff Scenario and Water Based Adaptation Strategy in South Asia (ARCP2013-20NMY-Shrestha)’ and ‘Rainwater Harvesting to Mitigate Drought in Western Nepal (CRYS2017-01MY-Panthi)’.