Abstract
There has been an exponential growth in the number of people living in urban areas since the middle of the twentieth century, and by the end of 2018, more than half of the world population lived in cities. This rapid urbanisation has created unprecedented challenges, among which the provision of domestic water has received increasing attention. Water is a basic need for humans and is the basis for socio-economic development. However, in many developing countries, governments have difficulties keeping pace with the fast rate of urbanisation due to limited financial resources and a lack of technical expertise. This ultimately results in a number of water-related problems, such as the lack of provision of an adequate water supply and improper sanitation, degradation of ecosystems and stormwater management failures. Moreover, climate change is exacerbating these water-related problems by influencing the hydrological cycle.
Today, there are 400 million urban dwellers worldwide affected by water scarcity and 250 million people are without improved sanitation services, causing an estimated 3.4 million deaths annually through water-borne diseases. These figures will inevitably increase, as an 80% increase in water demand is projected by 2050. According to the American Meteorological Society, accessibility to a sufficient supply of clean water is one of the critical issues facing society in the twenty-first century. Such issues are now receiving greater attention from politicians and policymakers, leading to increased research in this direction. This chapter provides insights into the problems leading to an unreliable and unsecure domestic water supply in cities and identified future water challenges that cities will face. Moreover, indicators used to measure domestic water security are explained and an index based on the amalgamation of those indicators is presented to facilitate a better understanding of urban water security.
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Acknowledgement
The authors acknowledge the World Resources Institute (https://www.wri.org/resources/data-sets/aqueduct-global-maps-21-data) and the United Nations, Department of Economics and Social Affairs (https://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/index.asp) for using their freely available census and water related spatial data, respectively.
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Singh, D., Liu, S., Singh, T.P., Gagnon, A.S., Thomas, T., Rai, S.P. (2021). Ensuring Domestic Water Security for Cities Under Rapid Urbanisation and Climate Change Risks. In: Venkatramanan, V., Shah, S., Prasad, R. (eds) Exploring Synergies and Trade-offs between Climate Change and the Sustainable Development Goals . Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-7301-9_10
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