The US-Mexico border divides the communities of Palomas, Chihuahua and Columbus, New Mexico, but they remain intimately linked. Both communities suffer from inadequate social services, poor public infrastructure, high unemployment and high poverty rates. To confront these challenges, Palomas and Columbus work together, sharing resources like hospitals, firefighters, and even schools. Palomas and Columbus also share another vital resource—groundwater. In the parched Chihuahuan desert, the communities depend on this groundwater as their sole water supply source, yet their aquifer is contaminated with arsenic and fluoride. Local governments acknowledged this contamination as early as the 1970s, but it was not until the 2000s that they received the needed reverse osmosis technology and water/wastewater infrastructure to ameliorate household exposure to water contamination. This thesis compares how Columbus and Palomas have addressed water insecurity over a twenty-year period from 1996-2016, using a 1996 study as the baseline (Tanski et al. 1998). New data include a household survey of 152 households, 60 semi-structured interviews, and participant observations of water practices collected during two months of fieldwork in the summer of 2016. The central research questions of this thesis are Q1) What causes household water insecurity on the US-Mexico border? and Q2) How can water policymakers and providers more equitably provide users with access to clean, reliable, and affordable drinking water? From a human development perspective, water security is defined as having an adequate supply of reliable and affordable water for a healthy life. This thesis uses a political ecological lens to more critically examine how water security connects to socio-political processes of water governance and power imbalances. Following Jepson (2014), this thesis argues that water (in)security is produced by problems in water access, water quality, and water affect (or water distress) and unfolds within a complex, hydrosocial landscape. Applying Jepson’s (2014) water security typology to Columbus and Palomas revealed that each local water utility adopted a distinct approach to addressing groundwater contamination, predicated on their financial and social resources, and structured by national and bi-national water policies as well as their institutional parameters. The survey found household water security has improved in terms of water access and reliability. But, centralized water filtration technology increased costs and reduced affordability in Columbus, while decentralized water filtration technology inadequately resolved household water supply contamination in Palomas. Thus, despite the technological improvements, households remain unevenly exposed to water contamination and costs. This raises concern about approaches to water security, which should be more finely attuned to water equity. Water equity means the rights to access clean water are more equitably distributed within the communities, and there is greater recognition/participation of community members in decision making on water management.

This article reviews and contrasts two approaches that water security researchers employ to advance understanding of the complexity of water-society policy challenges. A prevailing reductionist approach seeks to represent uncertainty through calculable risk, links national GDP tightly to hydro-climatological causes, and underplays diversity and politics in society. When adopted uncritically, this approach limits policy-makers to interventions that may reproduce inequalities, and that are too rigid to deal with future changes in society and climate. A second, more integrative, approach is found to address a range of uncertainties, explicitly recognise diversity in society and the environment, incorporate water resources that are less-easily controlled, and consider adaptive approaches to move beyond conventional supply-side prescriptions. The resultant policy recommendations are diverse, inclusive, and more likely to reach the marginalised in society, though they often encounter policy-uptake obstacles. The article concludes by defining a route towards more effective water security research and policy, which stresses analysis that matches the state of knowledge possessed, an expanded research agenda, and explicitly addresses inequities.

No description available.

Is there no development without water? Are arid and dry regions destined to face water scarcity? This essay argues that with globalisation and technological advancements in the water sector are making time and place less relevant for hydro securing societies. Instead, relevant for water insecure countries is the asymmetrical access to technologies and management. For instance, landscapes that are preconditioned to be dry are no longer determined to face water scarcity because of desalination industries such as in the case of Saudi Arabia. This paper will address the three following questions: a) What factors can explain water scarcity conditions in which they are not geographically preconditioned? b) In what ways have technological interventions created water security for societies living in geographically pre-conditioned physically water-scarce regions? c) Why is Saudi Arabia, a country who lack access to physical water sources such as rivers, lakes or groundwater not determined to become underdeveloped? The result from this qualitative research suggests that technological advancements does compress time and space and makes some societies living in dry and arid regions able to access fresh water from far distances. The example taken with the virtual water trading and the polar ice towing illustrates that with the capacity to invest in technologies may overcome environmental deterministic factors.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Biological & Agricultural Engineering / Stacy L. Hutchinson / Water security is one of the greatest challenges of this century. The anthropogenic and environmental demand for water could likely outpace the freshwater availability in the future due to challenges caused by the growing world population, technological and economic advancements, and climate change. The ability to ensure adequate quantities of safe, affordable, and accessible water in the future requires innovative and interdisciplinary approaches to water management using a systems perspective across multiple spatial and temporal scales. This dissertation provides a multi-scale perspective of water resources and associated ecosystem services to understand drivers of change in surface water availability across spatiotemporal scales. The ultimate goal of this work is to advance the development of water security solutions by contributing to the current water resources and ecosystem services knowledge base.

As Indian cities expand, conflicts over limited potable water supply and access are intensifying. These conflicts place water at the center of socio-spatial, cultural, political and ecological tensions in the city. Women from urban poor neighborhoods resort to stealing, storing, buying and borrowing water to meet the daily needs of their households. However, land tenure determines access to water. Exercising its juridical powers, the state legalizes certain spaces and practices (planned neighborhoods; buying and storing water) and criminalizes others (slums; stealing water). Thus, the state controls: i) who has legal access to potable water; ii) how potable water is legally collected; and iii) where potable water is legally available. My research uses a mixed methods approach to analyze water access, supply and management in New Delhi, India. Using primary data collected in 2009-2010 through surveys, interviews, focus groups, and participant observation, I analyze how women from two urban poor neighborhoods of New Delhi (one, a regularized inner city slum and the other, a resettlement colony) access and use potable water. I also investigate how city planners, state officials, and engineers, perceive water needs and water collection strategies of the residents from low-income neighborhoods. My findings indicate that the state’s responses to the lack of water security in Delhi are limited to technical and engineering solutions aimed at addressing the ‘water problems’ (Zerah, 2000), which, in turn normalize discourses of scarcity (Mehta, 2005; Swyngedouw, 2003), theft and overuse (Baviskar, 2003). I argue that water security is a discourse that draws on the technicist and economistic approaches of Western-dominated international planning, and therefore all attempts to address water (in)security that emerge from this discourse leads to water policies that ignore social constructions and context of water, especially gender. I found that women from low-income neighborhoods bear a disproportionate burden of the social, political, and physical consequences of limited potable water access. In planned low-income neighborhoods, women’s vulnerabilities emerging from lack of access to potable water are exacerbated. This implies that planning in cities such as New Delhi is unable to address the daily water needs of urban poor women. These findings indicate that planning initiatives in cities such as New Delhi, should explicitly respond to the current practices and needs of women, thus minimizing the distance between technocrats and the urban poor. / text

Aggregate mining in Ontario is a highly contentious landuse activity between many stakeholder groups. Land use activities, within a watershed, including anthropogenic infrastructure and anthropogenic changes to the natural infrastructure (such as aggregate pits and quarries), may increase susceptibility of an aquifer by modifying contaminant migration pathways, which is an issue of water security. The purpose of this research is to apply the Vulnerability Scoring Tool to test its utility in the field of water security. The methodology is applied to an aggregate extraction site in the Grand River Watershed in Ontario, and presents an example of how changing land use may change exposure pathways. In particular, the case study results indicate an increase in vulnerability once the aquitard had been penetrated, through aggregate excavation. Applying vulnerability and risk models to future aggregate mining sites can be a useful decision-making tool when investigating impacts of aggregate extraction sites on water security. / Canadian Water Network

This research addresses the need for efficient and effective management of water during any part of a crisis lifecycle, which is paramount if the negative impact on human health and quality of life is to be minimised. The unique contribution to knowledge is expressed through the creation of a framework for application of four key elements: Crisis Management, Knowledge Management, Public Health and Human Security within the realms of water resource utilisation during humanitarian crises. Through secondary data collection, the four key elements were identified. Primary data was subsequently gathered from subject experts in the form of semi-structure interviews that utilised a questionnaire to guide participants through the identified problem domain. This resulted in the creation of a draft framework that was critiqued by domain experts through both questionnaire and interview. A final framework was then constructed that took into consideration the needs expressed by all participants. The final framework was then tested against the historic crisis of Hurricane Katrina, for which a plethora of data and information was readily available, to ascertain its validity and applicability. Further work was identified as being the creation of an interactive toolbox of resources, which could be utilised in times of crisis based on need and applicability.

This study examines the relationship between oil supply and water security in the Middle East and North Africa. The aim is to see if countries without oil have a harder time mitigating water scarcity, as well as if countries with oil can be expected to become more vulnerable when oil becomes scarcer. This is important considering water security has impacts on many issues, such as political stability and food security. The study looks at panel data for 4 years between 1997- 2012 in a regression with Year Fixed Effects and finds that there is a positive correlation between oil supply and water supply. The study then uses this result to look qualitatively at three countries (Jordan, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia) that are diverse with respect to oil supply, and the results show that oil mainly impacts water security through desalination capabilities, due to oil fueling these facilities. The results also show that desalination may have led to excessive use in some countries, and that oil has allowed a higher consumption of water than is sustainable in the long run. This is significant because it has implications on future water security in the region, and therefore possibly on issues such as political stability.

A estiagem ocorrida no verão entre 2013 e 2014 prejudicou a recarga dos reservatórios do Sistema Cantareira e colocou em risco o abastecimento da Região Metropolitana de São Paulo (RMSP). Apesar de ser atribuída aos fatores climáticos, a (in)ação dos tomadores de decisão no âmbito da gestão de recursos hídricos pode ter contribuído para o agravamento do que ficou conhecido como a pior crise hídrica desde 1953. A condução do gerenciamento da crise foi marcada pela incapacidade das autoridades em fornecer uma resposta para a solução dos problemas decorrentes. Dessa forma, esta dissertação teve como objetivo realizar um levantamento histórico da gestão de recursos hídricos da RMSP, identificar e analisar os instrumentos para a segurança hídrica e gestão de risco nas políticas e o conjunto de políticas e estratégias adotadas para a RMSP para combater a crise hídrica como planos, programas e obras em andamento ou planejadas com foco no Plano de Contingência. A pesquisa foi realizada por meio de estudo de caso. Este trabalho considera que não foram adotadas medidas que visassem a gestão de risco, mas sim a gestão de crise, caracterizada pelas ações reativas dos tomadores de decisão. Tais ações foram controversas aos princípios de integração, participação e descentralização das políticas de recursos hídricos. Essa situação refletiu na elaboração tardia do Plano de Contingência, que ofereceu diretrizes vagas e pouco esclarecedoras. / The drought ocurred during the summer of 2013 and 2014 damaged the recharge of the reservoirs of Cantareira System and it put at risk the water supply of the Metropolitan Region of São Paulo (MRSP). Although attributed to climatic factors, the (in)action of the government decision-makers in relation to the management of water resources may have contributed to the aggravation of what was considered as the worst water crisis since 1953. The authorities\' inability to provide a response to the solution of the problems conducted the management of the crisis. Thus, this work aimed to carry out a historical survey of the water resources management of the MRSP, to identify and analyze the instruments for water security and risk management policies and the set of policies and strategies adopted for the MRSP to combat the crisis such as plans, programs and works in progress or planned focus on the Contingency Plan. This research was carried out through a case study. This work considers that the measures which were adopted did not aim the risk management, they just aimed the crisis management, characterized by the reactive actions of the government decision-makers. Those action were contradictory in relation to the principles of integration, participation and decentralization of water resources policies. That situation reflected in a late elaboration of the Contingency Plan which offered vague and unclear guidelines.