For a large proportion of the world's population, the provision of a reliable, sustained and safe water supply has become a top priority. As water stress increases, the need for effective water management becomes more pressing. However, the conventional approaches to water assessment are inappropriate for describing the increasing complexity of water issues. Instead, a multi-faceted approach is required to achieve real water poverty reduction. In order to link the biophysical, social, economic and environmental aspects which are influencing sustainable development of water resources, as well as the existing pressures and policy responses into one single, comparable, dynamic indicator, an enhanced Water Poverty Index (eWPI) has been developed and is proposed in this study. A pressure – state – response function is combined with the original Water Poverty Index (WPI) framework to produce a holistic tool for policy making. In particular, the index is aimed at allowing resource managers to determine and target priority needs in the water sector, while assessing development process. This paper is concerned not with the development or the underlying methodology of the index, but with how the tool can best be applied in practice to generate useful data, which then may be used to support decision-making. It highlights some of the applications of the index at different spatial scales, and two different case studies are presented: in Bolivia, at local scale; and in Peru, at watershed scale.

Peer Reviewed