Urban Household Water Insecurity from the Margins: Perspectives from Northeast Brazil

Abstract

Urban water security strategies commonly pivot around supply-side initiatives to mitigate scarcity, forecasted population growth, or anticipated climate change; yet, scholars have begun to expand urban water security scholarship by including alternative frameworks that incorporate equity into the analysis. Our study seeks to contribute to this equity turn by opening the investigative aperture on urban water security research in several aspects. We address the question of water security for whom, and turn our attention to the urban resident and household. We shift empirical focus to smaller urban centers in the Global South, and we develop a new assessment tool for water insecurity, the Household Water Insecurity Index (HWISI), to assess differences across the urban waterscape. We conducted this research in Forquilha (Ceará, Brazil), which represents an overlooked class of small urban centers common across Brazil’s semiarid region. We draw on qualitative and quantitative data to describe household water insecurity using the HWISI. The prevalence of household water insecurity is variable, with a quarter of the population experiencing moderate to severe household water insecurity. In addition, analysis of the factors within the HWISI demonstrated how specific water insecurity domains push households across water insecurity thresholds.

城市水保障措施一般是基于来自供水方的短缺调节、人口增长预测或气候变化预测。然而专家们已经把城市水保障研究拓展到了能包括公平的其它框架。我们的研究将在几个方面为城市水保障研究提供新的思路，旨在公平上的研究有所贡献。我们讨论了水保障是为谁的问题，关注的对象是城市居民和家庭。我们把焦点转向发展中国家较小的城市中心，开发了一个新的水危险评价工具（家庭水危险指数, HWISI）来评价城市水环境的差异。我们的研究区在巴西Ceara州的Forquilha市，是在巴西经常被忽视的半干旱地区小城市中的一个。我们用定量和定性方法，描述了基于HWISI的家庭水危机。研究发现，家庭水危险呈不均衡状态，四分之一的人口面临中度到重度的危险。另外，HWISI因子分析表明，某些特定的水危险指数可以导致完全的水危险。

Las estrategias de seguridad hídrica urbana comúnmente giran alrededor de iniciativas por el lado de suministros para atemperar la escasez, el crecimiento demográfico pronosticado, o el cambio climático que se anticipa; no obstante, los estudiosos han empezado a ampliar la erudición relacionada con seguridad hídrica urbana incluyendo marcos alternativos que incorporan la equidad en el análisis. Nuestro estudio busca contribuir en este giro hacia la equidad extendiendo la apertura investigativa sobre la seguridad hídrica urbana en varios aspectos. Abocamos la cuestión sobre seguridad del agua para quién, y volvemos nuestra atención hacia el residente urbano y el hogar. Cambiamos nuestro foco empírico hacia centros urbanos más pequeños del Sur Global, y desarrollamos una nueva herramienta de evaluación para determinar la inseguridad hídrica, el índice de Inseguridad Hídrica del Hogar (HWISI), para evaluar diferencias a través del paisaje hídrico urbano. Realizamos esta investigación en Forquilha (Ceará, Brasil), localidad representativa de una clase ignorada de centros urbanos pequeños, de común ocurrencia a través de la región semiárida del Brasil. Nos basamos en datos cualitativos y cuantitativos para describir la inseguridad hídrica de los hogares usando el HWISI. Es variable la prevalencia de inseguridad hídrica en hogares, con un cuarto de la población experimentando inseguridad hídrica, entre moderada y severa, en los hogares. Además, el análisis de los factores dentro del HWISI demostró de qué manera específica se empujan los dominios de la inseguridad hídrica a través de los umbrales de la inseguridad hídrica.

Key Words:

• Brazil
• drought
• equity
• household water insecurity
• semiarid
• urban

关键词:

• 巴西
• 干旱
• 平等
• 家庭水危险
• 半干旱
• 城市

Palabras clave:

• Brasil, equidad
• inseguridad hídrica de hogares
• semiárido
• sequía
• urbano

Acknowledgments

We thank Justin Stoler, Christian Brannstrom, and the anonymous reviewers for their support and advice in preparing this article.

Notes

1 Based on the factors extracted from the factor analysis, the HWISI was constructed through mathematical calculation: $I{A}_j={\Sigma }_{i=1}^n{w}_i{f}_{ij},$ where IA_j is an aggregate index of the j–ith observation; w_i is the weight attributed to the ith factor (w_i is the percentage of variance explained by factors i/percentage of variance explained by all factors); f_ij is the factorial score of the ith component for the ith observation; i = 1, … , p (principal components) and j = 1, … , n (observations). Finally, the index was standardized by a method expressed as follows: I_pji = I_ji – I_jr/I_jm - I_jr, where I_pji is the standardized value of indicator j in the ith observation; I_ji = is the indicator value j on the ith observation; I_jr is the value of indicator j on worst situation observation; and I_jm is the value of indicator j on best situation observation.

Additional information

Funding

Research for this publication was funded by the National Science Foundation (BCS-1560962, Geography and Spatial Science Program). We also thank the U.S. Fulbright Scholar program (Wendy Jepson, 2016–2017) for its support of our international collaboration.

Notes on contributors

Paula Tomaz

PAULA TOMAZ is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Department of Geography at the Federal University of Ceará, Fortaleza, 60020-181 Brazil. E-mail: [email protected]. Her research interests include water insecurity and environmental change in semiarid regions.

Wendy Jepson

WENDY JEPSON is a University Professor in the Department of Geography at Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77845. E-mail: [email protected]. Her research addresses contemporary debates in human–environment interactions with a focus on water governance and water security at the household and regional scales.

Jader de Oliveira Santos

JADER DE OLIVEIRA SANTOS is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography at the Federal University of Ceará, Fortaleza, 60020-181 Brazil. E-mail: [email protected]. His research interests include social and environmental vulnerability, social cartography, and environmental change in Brazil.