Is water security just? Concepts, tools and missing links

ABSTRACT

Both social and environmental justice overlap with water (in)security, but neither fully captures the nuances. This review extends a water justice framework by critiquing and further developing an existing environmental justice framework. Testing a reformulated understanding of water security through a case study reveals added insights derived from inclusion of scale and power dynamics.

KEYWORDS:

• Water security
• water justice
• power
• environmental justice

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. ‘A water footprint captures both the blue and green components of water consumption. A blue water footprint refers to the volume of surface and groundwater that is used for irrigation in the supply chain of a product (net abstraction less return flow), while the green footprint refers to the consumption of rainwater that is evapotranspirated from soil moisture’ (WWF International, 2012, p. 15).