Sammendrag
Water is essential for human well-being and is a basic asset for productive
livelihoods in many developing countries. It is also key to realizing most of the
Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Although the water MDG was met in
2010, 768 million people around the globe still lack access to safe and adequate
water. Huge disparities continue to exist in access between rural and urban
areas and rich and poor, as well as inherent social and gender inequalities.
We argue that debates about access have so far paid insufficient attention to
the long-term sustainability of systems and services for accessing water. They
have also neglected issues concerning uncertainty and social, environmental, and
technological dynamics—particularly through addressing power imbalances and
enhancing equity. There are two main reasons for this. One, discourses on access
tend to be globalized and general, often disconnected from people’s lived realities.
Two, the dynamic interaction among social, technical, and ecological/hydrological
dimensions of water across multiple scales is not adequately taken account of.
There is a variety of different pathways in which water systems of access might
develop. There are also multiple understandings and framings of water, and the
gathering of knowledge about such diverse understandings implies that appraisal
of access needs to broaden up to include a wider range of perspectives to
inform policy and political discourse. We thus introduce the concept of ‘Liquid
Dynamics’ to capture an understanding of sustainability that takes on board issues
of uncertainty, complexity, local knowledge, equity, gender, and power relations.
©
2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc
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