Invisible No More—Bringing a Human Voice to Water Insecurity | Opinion

The rising death tolls, the continued searches for more missing persons, and enormous rebuilding costs following the ravages of Hurricane Ian all point to massive hardships for millions. As many Floridians struggle to recover from the worst hurricane in a century, the severity of their water problems is unquestionable.

While this highly visible crisis highlights one state's water insecurity, water crises are unfolding around the globe much more quietly, often unnoticed. "Invisible" experiences related to too much, too little, or poor-quality water—meals not cooked, hands unwashed, nights spent thirsty—must be counted to accurately understand water-related suffering.

My research team at Northwestern University, Gallup, and the University of South Carolina captured these invisible experiences for the first time among half the world's population in a paper published this week at Lancet Planetary Health. The 12-question Individual Water Insecurity Experiences (IWISE) Scale was used to estimate that 436 million of the 3.06 billion adults in these countries were water insecure.

This first of its kind study has brought fresh insights to the water sector. Historically, agencies measured either physical availability of fresh water per capita in a region or infrastructure for drinking water delivery.

Estimating water insecurity based only on visible evidence hides the suffering of hundreds of millions of people as they try to bathe, feed, and care for themselves and their families while facing water issues.

Experiential measures fill some of the gaps in water data called out by the United Nation's High Level Panel on Water, because they are more holistic. For example, both Brazil and Egypt look good in terms of infrastructure; national statistics estimate that 99 percent of individuals in both countries have at least basic drinking water infrastructure. However, when water-related experiences were measured with the IWISE scale, just 73 percent of Egyptians and 84 percent of Brazilians were water secure.

In both countries, people experienced numerous hardships with water in the prior year; 65 percent reported water interruptions in Egypt and 46 percent reported the same in Brazil. In Brazil, 21 percent were unable to wash their bodies, and 15 percent were unable to do so in Egypt.

This is critical information necessary for policy and investment decisions by governments, companies, nonprofits, and development banks.

Another major takeaway is that water insecurity does not always occur where we might expect. Until now, the socio-demographic characteristics of the water insecure have not been known, because most global indicators measure water at the level of the basin.

In contrast, the IWISE Scale measures water insecurity at the individual level, so that it generates more precise data, with surprising results.

We found that no single characteristic predicted who would be water insecure. Income tended to buffer against water insecurity, but there were water insecure individuals among the wealthiest. For example, in India—10 percent of women and 7 percent of men in the highest income quintile were water insecure.

Defying historic interpretations and assumptions, women were not consistently more water insecure than men. The expectation is that they would be, as women tend to be responsible for water acquisition and water-intensive chores like laundry.

However, women were significantly more water insecure than men in only a handful of countries.

There is urgent need to measure water insecurity experiences alongside the data on water availability and infrastructure that is already typically collected in most countries.

It seems likely that measuring experiences of water insecurity alongside race and ethnicity will provide irrefutable evidence about water disparities. This can support the pursuit of environmental justice by organizations like the NAACP and the Environmental Protection Agency.

Some researchers are initially skeptical about measuring experiences of water insecurity. They look at IWISE data and ask, "But are they really water insecure?"

This is because water has long been tracked based on observable phenomenon—the number of liters of water used per day or how drinking water is delivered. These proxies fall short.

To see the value of experiential measures, it is only necessary to look to innovations in the measurement of food security. Decades ago, food security was also only tracked using visible indicators—calories available per capita or child growth.

Food security measurements have now evolved to capture the invisible. Since 2014, experiences with food insecurity have been measured annually in nearly every country, as part of the U.N.'s flagship "State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World."

It is critical to track water insecurity experiences globally in a similar way.

Water insecurity will increase in frequency and severity as infrastructure crumbles, water use increases, weather disasters abound, and climate change makes dry places drier and wet places wetter.

We are past due to include the invisible experiences of water insecurity in any discussion of a precious resource that none of us can live without.

Sera L. Young has led the development of the Water Insecurity Experiences Scales and is an associate professor of anthropology and fellow of the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.