Water stressed cities: individual choice, access to water and pathways to resilience in sub-Saharan Africa

Cities across the globe are facing water crises. Rapidly rising populations, climate change and ageing infrastructures are combining to create long-term water scarcity alongside episodic shocks when public water supplies fail. Around the world some 500m urban dwellers are currently estimated to live with water shortages, a figure that will rise to 1.9bn by 2050. This has far-reaching consequences for social and economic wellbeing and surrounding natural ecosystems. The problem is particularly acute in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), which is experiencing the fastest rate of urbanisation across the globe. In 2018, Cape Town, South Africa, came close to being the first major city in the world to run out of water, whilst Lagos in Nigeria is experiencing an abiding water crisis. In the face of governments' failure to provide reliable water supplies individual households and firms invest in their own personal water supply solutions, ranging from investing in their own boreholes and wellpoints to access groundwater reserves through to greywater harvesting.

Whilst individual supply solutions can provide a buffer to water shocks there are cumulative risks involved from a proliferation of individual actions. Over-abstraction, contamination and unequal access to water supplies within cities are particular concerns, with fiscal impacts also prevalent. Recent research illuminates the reasons for the choices made, but the scale of the actions taken, the values underlying these and their relationship to wider collective resilience outcomes remain uncertain. The aim of this research is to establish fundamental insights that strengthen our understanding of the emergent tradeoffs and spillovers between individual choices and the resilience of particular places.

At its simplest, resilience provides the ability to cope with sudden shocks or more long-term crises. In more dynamic circumstances, as experienced in contemporary urban SSA, resilience is better framed as the ability of an individual, system or society to adapt and, where necessary, transform to new circumstances. However, our understanding of how these processes of transformation play out in practice and influence the longer-term resilience of particular places to climatic, social or economic shocks remains acutely underdeveloped. Critical to this is an appreciation of the interplay between individual choice and collective outcome.

The research has three objectives. Firstly, to strengthen our knowledge of the extent to which individual water supply choices are influencing collective social, economic and ecological outcomes in four key cities (Cape Town, Dar es Salaam, Lagos and Windhoek). Secondly, to understand the conditions, norms and values that frame individual capacities to act in order to develop more effective everyday governance practices for a collective urban resilience. Thirdly, to develop new conceptual insights on urban water resilience in the face of natural and man-made shocks, through the development of an international community of engaged researchers and stakeholders.

The 7-year programme uses a novel mixed methods cross-cultural approach to explore this theme and develop strong practical partnerships within each city. Through comparative research it examines how individual and regulatory responses to water stress influence the resilience of each city and its inhabitants to potential shocks. The Fellowship will generate new understandings of the factors shaping the resilience of cities and contributes to the development of new models of urban development aligned to the needs of SSA. The Fellowship has been developed in collaboration with local actors and with global stakeholders, such as UN-Habitat, promoting real impact. It will inform urban water management practices (particularly of groundwater), support resilience agendas in the four cities and directly contribute to SDG 6: Clean Water and Sanitation and 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities.

Strengthening the resilience of societies in the face of shocks and change is now central to key international agreements (e.g. UN Sustainable Development Goals, Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, Paris Agreement on Climate Change, World Humanitarian Summit Framework, New Urban Agenda of Habitat III). There is broad agreement that this requires transformational and inclusive approaches, which are cognisant of scale and potential temporal trade-offs. Achieving these global goals requires collective action at the local, national and international level by communities, public authorities and the private sector. This Fellowship will contribute to these goals through each of its 3 objectives:

Firstly, my work will provide one of the first comprehensive and longitudinal assessments of the extent of the actions taken by actors in response to water stress in these major economic centres. A better understanding of the scale and nature of these developments, and their potential spillover effects, will not only benefit governing authorities and local communities but will provide learning outcomes that can be utilised internationally. Jointly devising improved policy responses will help generate health and economic returns crucial to sustainable urban development.

Secondly, working with community groups, water utilities and public sector actors will provide tools to facilitate improvements to the effectiveness of water governance and delivery policies, ranging from aquifer management plans through to community water management. Realising these public service benefits is crucial to the Fellowship.

Finally, I will contribute to a longer-term impact through raising awareness and understanding of the role of individual action in shaping collective resilience outcomes and how this might, in turn, be shaped. Through working with ARUP (informing their city resilience programmes), UN-Habitat (contributing to their Training Programme for City Leaders) and more directly with city authorities (such as City of Cape Town), this will help to build professional capacity and capability in the field of urban resilience.

These impacts will be achieved through working with four broad groups of beneficiaries. The means of achieving this are set out in the Pathways to Impact. Policy-makers are crucial beneficiaries of the Fellowship. At a city-level, I will engage with city authorities in Cape Town, Dar es Salaam, Lagos and Windhoek to raise awareness and understanding of the issues involved. At the international level, I will engage with UN-Habitat both to reach a wider network of urban authorities, and to influence international agendas. Through UN-Habitat I will also have access to national governments, who form a key interest group for my work. My Fellowship is also of relevance to the "city as a system" approach now being taken by DfID in its African Cities Research Programme and its priority to strengthen resilience and response to crisis.

In terms of water management and governance, water utility companies, such as NAMWATER in Namibia and the Lagos State Water Corporation in Nigeria, are important beneficiaries and have agreed to engage in the Fellowship. Wider urban service providers, such as ARUP, will also benefit from the insights generated by my work. Similarly, the Fellowship will provide important outcomes for third sector organisations (local and international) and donor bodies. The involvement of WaterAid is testament to this.

The ultimate beneficiaries of the Fellowship will be the firms and residents of towns and cities affected by water stress. By working with community leaders, as well as those organisations already identified, I will ensure that knowledge and understanding is offered which has a lasting practical impact. My previous research in Nigeria, where I was interviewed by local radio and state television, proved the value of my approach for raising awareness of challenges and good practice.