Sink or Swim? Water security for growth and development

By D. Grey, C. Sadoff. 2007

981 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Achieving basic water security, both harnessing the productive potential of water and limiting its destructive impact, has always been a societal priority. To capture this duality, water security is defined here as the availability of an acceptable quantity and quality of water for health, livelihoods, ecosystems and production, coupled with an acceptable level of water-related risks to people, environments and economies. This paper looks broadly at those countries that have achieved water security, the paths they chose and the costs they paid, and those countries that have not achieved water security and how this constrains economies and societies. It defines three typologies: countries that have harnessed hydrology, those hampered by hydrology and those that are hostage to hydrology. It finds that countries remaining hostage to hydrology are typically among the world's poorest. They face “difficult” hydrologies often characterized by high inter- and intra-annual rainfall and runoff variability, where the level of institutional and infrastructure investment needed is very high and the ability to invest is low. This paper seeks to capture the dynamics of achieving water security in a hypothetical water and growth “S-curve”, which illustrates how a minimum platform of investments in water institutions and infrastructure can produce a tipping point beyond which water makes an increasingly positive contribution to growth and how that tipping point will vary in different circumstances. As there are inevitable trade-offs, achieving water security is never without social and environmental costs; in some countries these are significant, often unforeseen and even unacceptable. This brief analysis suggests that the only historically demonstrated path to achieving water security at the national level has been through investment in an evolving balance of complementary institutions and infrastructure, but that lessons exist for following this basic path in more sustainable and balanced ways. Insights are provided for balancing and sequencing investments, adapting to changing values and priorities, and pushing down the social and environmental costs. The paper concludes that most water-insecure countries today face far greater challenges than those that achieved water security in the last century and are wealthy countries today. They face more difficult hydrologies and a greater understanding of and therefore greater responsibility for, the social and environment trade-offs inherent in water management. As the costs of poor countries not achieving water security, in terms of human suffering, sustained poverty, constrained growth and social unrest, would be very high, achieving water security is a challenge that must be recognized and must be met.

Subfields: Ocean Engineering, Sociology and Political Science, Water Science and Technology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/67324088c052951426392515cb99295306191f54

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Citations in the corpus

On water security, sustainability, and the water-food-energy-climate nexus (2013, methodology): “What is “acceptable” in the Grey and Sadoff definition of water security [5] — twice, on the two sides of the exposure to insecurity — will doubtless have to be found through the “governance” of Cook and Bakker [2] and the case-specific “contested politics” of Mehta [18], hence reconciling the “give”
Quantitative maps of groundwater resources in Africa (2012, background): “Even for those with access to improved water sources, there is growing evidence that domestic water use will need to increase substantially to help move people out of poverty (Grey and Sadoff 2007, Hunter et al 2010).”
The Global Web of National Water Security (2011, methodology): “When a relationship between a country’s GDP (as seen in Ethiopia) is found to correspond with river flow variability, dams are proposed.”
The Melting Himalayas: Cascading Effects of Climate Change on Water, Biodiversity, and Livelihoods (2009, background): “Water is not only a source of life, livelihoods, and prosperity but also a cause of death, devastation, and poverty (Grey & Sadoff 2007).”
Measuring global water security towards sustainable development goals (2016, background): “While there is no universal definition for ‘security’, diverse notions can be found in the available security literature (Grey and Sadoff 2007, Bakker 2012, Bogardi et al 2012, Cook and Bakker 2012, Allan et al 2013, Grey et al 2013, Lawford et al 2013, PahlWostl et al 2013, Benson et al 2015,…”
Human water consumption intensifies hydrological drought worldwide (2012, background): “However, our scale of analysis (∼50 km by ∼50 km) does not comprehend local-scale adaptive response to drought; for example conjunctive use of surface water and groundwater, retention ponds, and water-saving practice (Grey and Sadoff 2007).”
Hydroclimate risk to economic growth in sub-Saharan Africa (2011, background): “The effect of these hydrologic variability impacts can be devastating in any country, but especially in those with enhanced vulnerability due to high dependence on agriculture and low infrastructure inventory (World Bank 2004; Grey and Sadoff 2007).”