Browsing by Autor "L. Forni"

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Connecting Water Access with Multidimensional Poverty: The Case of Tupiza River Basin in Bolivia
(Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute, 2022) Sophia Espinoza; L. Forni; Angela Lavado; Marcelo Olivera; Cecilia Tapia; Blanca García Vega; Melina Balderrama; Marisa Escobar
In developing countries, where economic expansion depends on extractive activities such as agriculture and mining, water quantity and quality considerations need to be examined in tandem with GDP growth and poverty reduction efforts. Poorest households in the Tupiza watershed in Bolivia are located in rural areas where water access for irrigation and safe drinking water is becoming increasingly scarce. Small-scale unregulated mining offers an alternative for revenue making in rural households, although wastewater from industry threatens water quality and new technologies to reduce water pollution are not implemented in this region yet. This study analyses water access and poverty linkages using the Multidimensional Poverty Analysis (MDPA) framework from the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) to guide a survey and to develop indicators using the Shapley-Owen decomposition method and multivariate regressions. A set of household-level policies were included to predict the influence of these policies on poverty reduction estimates. Results have shown that remote communities in rural areas have the lowest value of multidimensional poverty and for some of these communities mining activities represent an alternative that could be considered if their water access conditions worsen over time. While mining can bring better monetary benefits, it can cause the degradation of ecological flows from the produced wastewater. Under the current technologies and processes, it can pose negative impacts on water quality and threatens the public health of these communities.
Integrating equality in evaluation of water access for irrigation in an Andean community
(2020) Lina G. Terrazas V.; L. Forni; Marisa Escobar A.; Marisa Escobar A.
Development statistics for Bolivia reflect considerable inequalities among people, for instance, poverty rates are much higher in rural agricultural communities, where living conditions depend to a great extent on access to water resources. Many policy interventions ignore the principle of equality, and in some cases even exacerbate differences. In this paper, we examine water access for irrigation in an Andean community, integrating a perspective of equality based on data disaggregation. By analyzing the available data, we identified that tenure of rights and distribution priority are the main criteria that control water access in the community. Based on these criteria, water demand was disaggregated into 28 groups and the system was simulated using the Water Evaluation and Planning (WEAP) software, which allowed us to assess water demand coverage. Some groups receive less than 20% of their water demand, while others receive almost 100%. These inequalities are hidden in an aggregated model, which shows that the entire system never receives less than 60% of water demand. An evaluation of future climate change scenarios showed that water demand coverage could decline a further 15% in the dry season. The implementation of planned strategies, however, could counteract that decline by increasing supply and storage facilities; the model showed that implementing these strategies could raise water demand coverage up to 80% for some groups; however, others still face shortages. This study highlights methods and tools in planning that can strengthen existing equality approaches, and increase the efficiency in reducing poverty and inequality through water management.
Social Hydrological Analysis for Poverty Reduction in Community-Managed Water Resources Systems in Cambodia
(Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute, 2021) L. Forni; Susan R. Bresney; Sophia Espinoza; Angela Lavado; Marina Mautner; Jenny Yi-Chen Han; Ha Nguyen; Chap Sreyphea; Paula Uniacke; Luís Villarroel
Achieving sustainable water resources management objectives can work in tandem with poverty reduction efforts. This study evidenced the strong social hydrological linkages that exist in Cambodia, which allowed for presenting a broader understanding of water resources challenges to better formulate and connect policies at the local and national levels. Models are often not developed with household- or community-level input, but rather with national- or coarse-level datasets. The method used in this study consisted of linking qualitative and quantitative social analysis with a previously developed technical water planning model. The results from the social inequalities analysis were examined for three water use types: domestic, rice production, and fishing in three parts of the watershed, namely, upstream, midstream, and downstream. Knowledge generated from the social analysis was used to refine previous water planning modeling. The model results indicate that without household data to consider social inequalities, the technical analysis for the Stung Chinit watershed was largely underrepresenting the shortages in irrigation supply seen by groups in the most downstream sections of the irrigation system. Without adding social considerations into the model, new policies or water infrastructure development suggested by the model could reinforce existing inequalities.