Household water use, poverty and seasonality: Wealth effects, labour constraints, and minimal consumption in Ethiopia
Section snippets
1. Introduction
In much of rural Africa, little is known about actual patterns of water availability, access and use. Ethiopia is no exception. Both national statistics and data from the WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme indicate that water coverage is improving, though datasets vary considerably due to their different estimation methods
2. Methodology
Data were collected using a modified HEA approach, adapted to include water, termed Water Economy for Livelihoods (WELS). This is described in full in Coulter et al. [17]. WELS was developed to bring analytical rigour to understanding the linkages between water and food security and is designed to build on the HEA approach and analytical framework which has already gained credibility in Ethiopia and other countries. The premise behind both WELS and HEA is that an understanding of how people
3.1. Water sources, collection times and water quality
In the highland WBP Livelihood Zone there are many springs, most of which (85%) are unprotected (lacking the addition of structures to protect the catchment and spring head from contamination). Households use these for all domestic uses and watering livestock (Fig. 2). Livestock watering also takes place at small seasonal streams. In SMC Livelihood Zone, springs are also common and provide the major source of domestic water, but are much more widely scattered and interspersed with other
4. Conclusions
Household water use in this part of Ethiopia is very low, in many cases not much above the minimum thresholds associated with humanitarian emergencies. Volumes used for hygiene are particularly small, falling to as little as 0.5 lpcd in the dry season in some cases. While the use of water for drinking and cooking is inelastic, even when waiting times increase in the dry season (at least within the limits of collection times in a normal year), water use for hygiene declines sharply in the dry
Acknowledgements
This paper is published with the permission of the Executive Director of the British Geological Survey (NERC). The research was funded in part by a grant from the UK Department for International Development (DFID). Groundwater resilience to climate change in Africa. The opinions expressed in the paper are not necessarily those of DFID.
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