Water, Politics and 'Access'

Welcome to my new blog

Water scarcity is an issue of massive importance in Africa. With the African continent’s population expecting to have doubled to 2.4 billion by 2050 (UN, 2015), and water being an absolute necessary resource for human existence, there is a huge pressure for effective policymaking to ensure that everyone can receive their minimum water needs.

Predominant lines of research currently looking at water scarcity in Africa often focus on the instance of physical or natural characteristics. However, access to water in Africa is determined hugely by politics globally, nationally, and locally. A focus on both the politics of, as well as policy making to alleviate, water scarcity is therefore essential to tackling the problem.

It is with this mind-set that this blog has been set up! Over the course of the next few weeks I hope to begin to unpack the different ways politics is bound up in the issue of water scarcity in Africa. Politics determine how different people acquire different levels of power over a given situation. In relation to water in Africa therefore, politics at different scales have a huge impact on levels of access. Through this blog series I wish to explore the power relations embedded in water availability, especially in relation to globalisation. 

Some preliminary areas I am going to cover therefore include:

• the impact of (hydro)colonialism
• zooming in to a small scale case study on local politics at the tap
• the impacts of urban water privatisation 
• water and conflict - is there a connection?
• discourse and the media - is there a true portrayal of Africa's water crises?
• policy approaches to water access

To start with my exploration, the earlier mentioned notion of ‘access’ is something that I would like to expand on, as it is a theme that will be likely to thread through many of my upcoming posts.

'Access'

To me, the notion of 'access' is integral to exploring the politics of water provision. You could have a lake of the cleanest water, but without access to it, it is not of any use. Despite this however, much work surrounding water availability in Africa (i.e. Falkenmark, 1989) fails to mention this key facet. Zeitoun (2016) calls such approaches 'reductionist', and they are often favoured for their ability to be easily used in comparing multiple countries. Their broad nature looking at whole countries and thereby lacking specificity of local phenomena leads to easy and dramatic statistics. 

The World Health Organisation has produced a definition for 'access' to water as an individual living within 200m of an improved water source. Yet, even this definition does not account for access in terms of water quality, nor the huge impact of access in relation to politics.

To reiterate therefore, this blog seeks to understand how politics is related to water, specifically in relation to access. Over the next few weeks I hope that this blog will be able to give me a better understanding of the role of politics in water provision in Africa...

I look forward to seeing what I can find!

United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division (2015). World Population Prospects: The 2015 Revision, Key Findings and Advance Tables. Working Paper No. ESA/P/WP.241.

Zeitoun, M et al., (2016) Reductionist and integrative research approaches to complex water security policy challenges, Global Environmental Change, 39, 143-154.

Falkenmark, M (1989) The massive water scarcity threatening Africa-why isn't it being addresseed, Ambio 18, no. 2 (1989): 112-118.