Access to water affects the vulnerability of pastoralist communities. Pastoralists depend on water for sustaining herds, as well as for their own health and survival. Pastoralists have developed complex water use patterns to support both human and animal welfare. In this context, there are fundamental questions over the appropriateness of conventional water access indicators used by government and multilateral agencies to adequately capture such complex practices.
Abinet Kebede, Researcher and Policy Advisor
Key issues
In short, conventional indicators are considered to poorly reflect the actual patterns of pastoralist water use which leads to a misunderstanding of pastoralists’ water-related resilience strategies and vulnerabilities to risks such as climate change, conflict and poverty. Seasonal water needs have received little attention from policymakers and practitioners in the sector. In some cases, permanent water sources have been constructed, which do not meet the needs of communities and conflict with existing patterns of movement of people and livestock and grazing patterns.
Mental health and emotional wellbeing
An ESRC-DFID research project called “Water-security in Ethiopia and the Emotional Response of Pastoralists (WEEP)” (2017-18) set out to shift thinking about how to monitor and evaluate the success of water programmes for these groups. Instead of trying to capture complex water use patterns through infrastructure or service-based approach, the research explored the role of water in shaping emotional well-being. The project emphasized emotional well-being is a potential proxy for water security due to the relationships between mental health, stress, and other emotions to water insecurity. Rather than observing water use, a tool was designed to capture how people respond to their water situation emotionally.
The study team inductively developed the emotional indicator tool by employing different research designs and protocols. The first step the team conducted in developing the indicator was to explore the general context of natural resource use and access to services in the target communities to generate the necessary understanding needed to frame the analysis of the communities’ water security and the shaping of their emotional experiences mainly through FGDs and Key informant interviews. In the second phase, the team explore local interpretations of emotion and the emotional response to aspects of water security through gender-differentiated KIIs and FGDs. The process enabled the study team to identify a complex and rich lexicon of emotions experienced in relation to water security. By using those terminologies, the study team developed the ‘emotional circumplex’ that serves as an emotional indicator.
Using the indicators developed, a structured survey was conducted in three villages. Taking into account the labour division of households, interviews were conducted with both male and female respondents within a household to understand emotional discrepancies due to their daily routines, if there are any.
Findings
The findings indicate that most of the respondents had negative emotional responses i.e., feel depressed or have anxiety towards their overall water security conditions. Though the difference in the quantity of water gathered in the dry and wet season by households was not statistically significant, the emotional responses were different as households showed positive responses in the wet season and negative responses in the dry season. Feelings of negative well-being and water insecurity were experienced in the dry season as the distance travelled in search of water increases. The long distances travelled by men searching for water and pasture resulted in feelings of displacement from their family for both men and women respondents.
There is a strict division of labour in the community and the study team anticipated such division of labour may shape the water needs and could potentially have an influence on the emotional wellbeing of male and female respondents, but, unfortunately for us, no gender-based differences were observed on the emotional responses provided in relation to water security in both dry and wet seasons. However, water insecurity placed an immense burden on single-headed households who had no young children. Both male and female single headed households were affected by the hardships they faced over the conflicting priorities of daily chores and time spent on water collection.
Our findings from this particular area revealed that impacts of climate change like a higher risk of drought and depletion of water resources aggravated pastoralists’ access to water and aggravated their water insecurity conditions, which led to deteriorated emotional wellbeing and negative outlook within the community.
Conclusion
Finally, the newly developed indicators had given us a new outlook in the problem discussed. But to ensure the indicators and the tool developed by the project brings impact in the sector, it requires further investigation by conducting large scale analysis in different contexts and popularising it with development practitioners.