Tanker water markets (TWM) supply water services in many urban areas, including those
unconnected to public infrastructures. Notwithstanding, they have been associated with outcomes in
conflict with sustainability goals of water policy, e.g., through inequitable and unaffordable supply
or by contributing to groundwater overexploitation. So far, the literature dedicated to TWM has
primarily conducted case studies embedded in diverse local contexts, which impedes the comparison
and transfer of insights. In this article, we systematically summarize existing empirical knowledge on
TWM and assess to what extent normative claims about the impacts of TWM on sustainability goals
are supported by evidence. We use the concept of sustainable access, which combines notions of
what constitutes access to water and what characterizes sustainable supply of services. The available
evidence suggests that TWM have two key functions in urban water systems: (1) They provide
services at otherwise unavailable levels, particularly with respect to the temporal availability and
spatial accessibility of the service, and (2) they extend access to areas without or with low-quality
network supply, typically low-income communities on the fringe of cities. From the perspective of
sustainable access, we find that TWM can provide high service levels and thus fill a specific gap in
the landscape of urban water services. Due to comparatively high prices, however, it is unlikely that
these services are affordable for all. The combination of heterogeneous access to cheaper (subsidized)
piped water and marginal pricing in TWM results in allocation outcomes that are not coherent with
existing notions of equitable access to water. However, there is little convincing evidence that TWM
necessarily result in unsustainable water use. The literature indicates that urban water governance in
the studied areas is frequently characterized by a lack of effective institutions, which impedes the
regulation or formalization of TWM.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:DRESDEN/oai:qucosa:de:qucosa:91424 |
| Date | 16 May 2024 |
| Creators | Zozmann, Heinrich, Morgan, Alexander, Klassert, Christian, Klauer, Bernd, Gawel, Erik |
| Publisher | MDPI |
| Source Sets | Hochschulschriftenserver (HSSS) der SLUB Dresden |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion, doc-type:article, info:eu-repo/semantics/article, doc-type:Text |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
| Relation | 11029, 10.3390/su141711029 |
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