A new study has presented a worrying environmental picture by suggesting that wealthy people’s swimming pools and manicured lawns are leaving people in cities without access to basic water requirements. The research carried out by researchers from the University of Reading, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, University of Manchester and Uppsala University in Sweden was published in the journal Nature Sustainability, and aimed to establish the fact that societal disparities drive urban water availability issues more than environmental factors like climate change, population growth and others.
The research team zeroed in on Cape Town, South Africa, and other cities like London, Miami, Barcelona, Beijing, Tokyo, Melbourne, Istanbul, Cairo, Moscow, Bangalore, Chennai, Jakarta, Sydney, Maputo, Harare, Sao Paulo, Mexico City, and Rome. As account of the findings of the research, Professor Hannah Cloke from the University of Reading, who was also part of the research team, said: “Climate change and population growth mean that water is becoming a more precious resource in big cities, but we have shown that social inequality is the biggest problem for poorer people getting access to water for their everyday needs.”
The research has determined that upper and middle class households, which consist of 14 percent of Cape Town’s population, use 51 percent of the city’s water consumption. This is in comparison to the 62 percent of the population who are ‘informal dwellers’, who live in shacks at the edge of the city, and use only 27 percent of the city’s water consumption. The researchers suggested that rather than focus on technical solutions to water management, such as building better infrastructure, a more proactive approach to reducing water consumption by the rich is needed.
The authors of the study, Dr Elisa Savelli from Uppsala University in Sweden, strongly recommends the governments of the cities take acknowledge the importance of managing water supplies more effectively to benefit both people in the city and people in the developing world. If done properly, this could create more equitable access to both water and other resources in the long term.
