Water Poverty Assessment and Management Strategies

Water poverty assessment encompasses a multidimensional evaluation of water availability, access and security, interwoven with socioeconomic capacity and environmental health. Central to this field is the Water Poverty Index, which synthesises resource quantity, service accessibility, institutional capacity, consumption practices and ecosystem resilience into a single framework. Management strategies have evolved from sectoral and fragmented interventions towards integrated water resource management, emphasising cross-sector collaboration, adaptive governance and equitable resource allocation. Innovations include data-driven weighting of index components, livelihood-approach assessments and financial instruments to ensure affordability while upholding the human right to water. Globally, these assessments inform targeted policy interventions—from prioritising infrastructure investments in arid regions to refining urban water-pricing models—thereby enhancing both local resilience and sustainable development goals.

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Water Poverty Assessment and Management Strategies publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in water poverty assessment and management strategies across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Water Poverty Index (WPI): A composite measure that integrates water resources, access, capacity, use and environmental health into a single metric for assessing water poverty.

Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM): A process promoting the coordinated development and management of water, land and related resources to maximise economic and social welfare without compromising ecosystem sustainability.

Multidimensional Poverty: A conceptual framework that recognises poverty as a complex phenomenon involving multiple deprivations beyond income, including access to essential services such as water.

Principal Component Analysis (PCA): A statistical technique used to reduce the dimensionality of data sets by transforming correlated variables into a smaller number of uncorrelated factors, often applied to weight index components objectively.

Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP): A structured decision-making method that decomposes complex problems into a hierarchy, allowing experts to derive weights through pairwise comparisons of criteria.

References

1. Broadening the water affordability approach to monitor the human right to water. Cities (2023).
2. The Socioeconomic Dimensions of Water Scarcity in Urban and Rural Mexico: A Comprehensive Assessment of Sustainable Development. Sustainability (2024).
3. Assessing Water Poverty of Livelihood Groups in Peri-Urban Areas around Dhaka under a Changing Environment. Water (2021).