BERLIN, June 29 ― As a result of climate change, the time women spend fetching water could increase by 30 per cent in some parts of the world by 2050, according to a new study that links this risk to rising temperatures and reduced rainfall.
In some rural areas of the world, notably in Southeast Asia, Africa and South America, women living without access to running water spend an average of almost half an hour (22.84 minutes) a day collecting water. This onerous task increases inequalities and their living conditions, with adverse effects on their physical and mental health. And this lack of access to water is likely to worsen as a result of the climate crisis. Research carried out by researchers at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) in Germany, and published in the journal Nature Climate Change, estimates that the time spent collecting water could double due to rising temperatures and reduced precipitation.
The study is based on historical data from surveys of residents in 347 sub-national regions on four continents (Africa, Latin America, Eastern Europe and Asia) between 1990 and 2019. It analyses the effects of climate on water collection time, based on the estimate that a 1°C rise in temperature increases women's daily travel time by 4 minutes. “Climate change leads to rising temperatures and alters rainfall patterns, affecting the availability of water,” explains study coauthor Robert Carr, guest researcher at PIK, quoted in a news release. “We found that women will have to spend up to 30 per cent more time each day collecting water by 2050 under a high-emission scenario. This can be reduced to 19 per cent if global warming is kept below 2 degree Celsius.”
“Our results shed light on a gendered dimension of climate change impacts,” states study coauthor, Leonie Wenz. “They show how strongly climate change will affect women's well-being. Due to higher water collection times, they will lose time for education, work and leisure. By 2050, the cost of lost working time alone, calculated at the country-specific minimum wage, would be substantial, reaching tens to hundreds of millions of US dollars per country and year under a high-emission scenario.”
A Unesco report, published in March, reports that of the 2.2 billion people in the world who still do not have access to safe drinking water, girls and women are the first to suffer. In particular, water scarcity contributes to girls dropping out of school more frequently than boys. ― ETX Studio
