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Climate hazards in the form of cyclones are projected to become more intense under the pressures of future climate change. These changes represent a growing hazard to low lying coastal cities like Beira, Mozambique. In 2019, Beira experienced the devastating impact of Cyclone Idai. One of the many impacts resulting from this Cyclone was disrupted drinking water access. This investigation explores the distribution of Cyclone Idai’s impact on drinking water access via an environmental justice lens, exploring how preexisting water access characteristics may have predisposed households to the impacts of Cyclone Idai in Beria.

Relying on household survey data collected in Beira, the investigation applied a decision tree algorithm to investigate how drinking water disruption was distributed across the household survey sample using these preexisting vulnerabilities.

The investigation found that households that mainly relied upon piped water sources and experienced inconsistent access to water in the year prior to Cyclone Idai were more likely to experience disrupted drinking water access immediately after Cyclone Idai. The results indicate that residents in formal areas of Beira, largely reliant upon piped water supply, experienced higher rates of disrupted drinking water access following Cyclone Idai.

These findings question a commonly held assumption that informal areas are more vulnerable to climate hazards, like cyclones, than formal areas of a city. The findings support the inclusion of informal settlements in the design of climate change adaptation strategies.

The aim of this chapter is to determine the need for water management and accounting.

This chapter first gives an overview of water-related business risks and exposes the need for sound corporate water management and accounting; it then critically examines water-related issues from an accountability perspective. Furthermore, it gives an overview of Australian Standardised Water Accounting (SWA) and General Purpose Water Accounting (GPWA) as possible practices to strengthen water disclosure.

The present study confirms the need for, and the importance of, transparent, high-quality, credible and comparable water disclosure. Water is considered a public good and involves a public interest and, consequently, public responsibility for its usage, management and protection. Following this line of reasoning, the chapter draws attention to the need for accountability to be ‘public’ or at least shared between crucial stakeholders (government – at national and international levels, water industries, communities, environmentalists, NGOs, etc.).

Company efforts are commonly focused on internal and self-referred operations. The different and conflicting uses that may be made of water, and the fact that water is geographically and temporally sensitive, necessitate a search for more flexible and more extended forms of accountability. An implication of these findings is the need and opportunity to switch focus from a single/private perspective to a more general/public one, with benefits for all the stakeholders.

This research enhances our understanding of water management and accounting and may serve as a sound base for future studies on this challenging topic.

The purpose of this paper is: to track the methods by which farmers access groundwater for irrigation in the North China Plain (NCP); to explore whether climate factors influence farmers’ decisions on the methods of groundwater access for irrigation; and to examine whether the amount of groundwater use for irrigation and crop yield systematically differ across groups of farmers using various methods of groundwater access, and how climate factors affect them.

Descriptive statistical analysis and econometric models are used on household survey data collected over several years and county-level climate data.

Over the past few decades, a significant share of farmers have switched the methods of groundwater access from collective tubewells to own tubewells or groundwater markets. Farmers who bought water from groundwater markets applied less water to wheat plots than those who had their own tubewells. However, wheat yield was not negatively affected. Both average climate conditions and long-term variations were found to be related to farmers’ choice of methods of groundwater access for irrigation. More frequent droughts and increasingly volatile temperatures both increased the likelihood of farmers gaining groundwater irrigation from markets.

The analysis results suggest farmers are using groundwater markets to help them adapt to climate change. Applying empirical analysis to identify the impact of the methods by which farmers access groundwater for irrigation on the amount of groundwater use and crop yield will help policy makers design reasonable adaptation policies for the NCP.

The purpose of this paper is to survey water-governance issues impacting women in Mexico and steps that have been taken to rectify the issues, including factors that impact the success of such ventures.

Various major academic databases were searched for material pertaining to the issue of water management and gender in Mexico, such as EBSCOHost and JSTOR. Both global and regional concerns were a factor in this search. Material was considered on the basis of its recency, academic import, and specificity.

The review finds that though gender has become a primary concern in addressing water management and other environmental issues, debate has occurred as to whether a perspective of gender mainstreaming or gender-specific projects is preferable in addressing this issue. Although success in implementing gender mainstreaming has been attained by several major organizations, there does not yet exist conclusive evidence that this approach yields desired results.

Information about the efficacy of water access programs is not always available and it is frequently inaccurate. Therefore, much information used in this review takes the form of observations about water policy and its efficacy in regard to gendered approaches.

Women and girls are unevenly affected by a lack of access to water, as it is typically women who bear the brunt of managing household water, and they are more significantly impacted by lacking hygiene facilities.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a picture of the water situation of the states of India and to identify key areas in which intervention is necessary for sustainable development and poverty elevation.

To understand the trend and situation of water across the states, Water Poverty Index (WPI) has been constructed. WPI has been computed for the years 2012 and 2018 to get a picture of temporal change happening in the region. Further, descriptive statistics were used to show the required changes.

Jharkhand and Rajasthan continue to be the worst performer in both time periods. Water poverty was the least in the states of Goa and Chandigarh for both time periods. Although owing to improvement in access and capacity component, the water status of India as a whole improved from 2012 to 2018 but few states have witnessed a decline in their water situation mainly due to deterioration in the environment and resource components.

This paper adds to the relatively scarce literature on the water situation conducted for the states of India. The findings of the paper provide insights into the lacking areas responsible for the deterioration in water poverty status. The results can be utilized for framing proper policies to combat the water woes of the country.

This paper aims to respond to increasing interest in the intersection between accounting and human rights and to explore whether access to information might itself constitute a human right. As human rights have “moral force”, establishing access to information as a human right may act as a catalyst for policy change. The paper also aims to focus on environmental information, and specifically the case of corporate water‐related disclosures.

This paper follows Griffin and Sen, who suggest that a candidate human right might be recognised when it is consistent with “founding” human rights, it is important and it may be influenced by societal action. The specific case for access to corporate water‐related information to constitute a human right is evaluated against these principles.

Access to corporate water‐related disclosures may indeed constitute a human right. Political participation is a founding human right, water is a critical subject of political debate, water‐related information is required in order for political participation and the state is in a position to facilitate provision of such information. Corporate water disclosures may not necessarily be in the form of annual sustainability reports, however, but may include reporting by government agencies via public databases and product labelling. A countervailing corporate right to privacy is considered and found to be relevant but not necessarily incompatible with heightened disclosure obligations.

This paper seeks to make both a theoretical and a practical contribution. Theoretically, the paper explores how reporting might be conceived from a rights‐based perspective and provides a method for determining which disclosures might constitute a human right. Practically, the paper may assist those calling for improved disclosure regulation by showing how such calls might be embedded within human rights discourse.

While there is an urgent need for clean water in Ghana and Nigeria, governments lack the financial means to do much to address this need. This does not mean that improving access to clean water is impossible. On the contrary, this paper argued that engaging citizens through co-production, as is already being done in developed countries in the fields of care-giving, waste management, healthcare and community policing, could provide a successful strategy. The purpose of this paper is to examine how public water facilities are being managed to improve and sustain access to clean water for domestic use in rural areas in Ghana and Nigeria.

A survey interview with households and in-depth interviews with water professionals were conducted in Ghana and Nigeria to help the authors understand the practicalities of the co-production of clean water and how this is improving and maintaining access to clean water sources. The paper draws on a philosophical framework of “deep” citizen engagement to describe the merits of co-production and how it works in practice in developing countries.

Based on the interviews with officials and surveys among the population of rural areas in the two countries studied, the authors found that the two countries vary significantly in their approach to water management decisions and the extent to which citizens are involved. Ghana’s approach seems much more successful than Nigeria when it comes to maintaining boreholes for water supply with the help of the population. In Nigeria, three-quarters of the public water facilities are non-functional, while in Ghana, community involvement in maintaining public water facilities has resulted in the sustained use of boreholes and eliminated the lack of access to clean water in many communities.

This paper contributes to the practical understanding of co-production in developing countries and the potential of such co-production in improving clean water access. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no previous scientific research has studied how co-production can improve and sustain access specifically to clean water sources in developing countries, and this paper aimed to fill this gap.

The purpose of this paper is to explore water management practices in four criteria – access to potable water; despoilment or pollution levels; grade of sanitation architecture; and grade of delivery architecture – in a variety of different Latin American and European nations to establish techniques that are currently been utilised in Europe that could improve water management in Latin America.

A systematic review of the available literature on water management in Europe and Latin America is performed to uncover differences and similarities in Latin American and European nations. The documents find are mostly recent, ranging from the last five years (2012-2016).

Some best practices from Europe cannot be applied in Latin America due to lack of funding. Fortunately, this is likely to change, as many Latin American nations’ economies are rapidly improving. Tentative recommendations include installing a system of pipeline that passes through all rural areas, and governments partnering with local businesses to provide sanitation, and regular sanitation and environmental inspections to minimise water pollution. It is also advisable for serious consideration to be given to achieving a measure of universality vis-à-vis water management standards across Latin America.

There is limited information in literature on the analysis of water management in Europe and Latin America, so this paper serves as a reference to fill the gaps, mainly in Latin America because that region is in development compared to European countries with advanced water systems.

In decades since the Rio Summit, freshwater has become an increasingly prominent issue in the global arena and attention has turned to the role of the corporate sector. Various (predominantly voluntary) corporate water accounting standards currently exist, from water-related components in wide-ranging sustainability standards such as the Global Reporting Initiative through to standards specifically focused on water and/or a particular industry. While academic research on adoption of these standards is sparse, initial findings reveal generally poor water reporting in terms of both quality and quantity. In future, the major areas where reporting (and standards) could be improved are the provision of site-level water information and the assessment of water risk throughout the supply chain.