Achieving Sustainable Development Goal 6.1 for safe, sufficient, and available water has always been important. Compounding challenges—from climate change and increasing migration within and across borders to COVID-19 and its multiple variants—makes achieving the human right to water more urgent. But what is often missed in discussions related to water access is that what determines access to safe and sufficient water is about more than gaps in governance or lack of funding—it is intertwined with entrenched inequality in societies, including the planning of urban spaces.

Water inequality in planning processes of formal and informal housing

A wide body of scholarship situates water issues as part of broader debates on inequality. Where someone lives and their type of home determines their level of access to sufficient and available water. People suffer doubly when living in informal settlements or resettlement sites far from city centers. They must find various water sources to meet daily needs and pay high prices for the water, though they often live below the poverty line.

Even populations counted as having access to sufficient and available water often struggle and barely meet their needs. Many challenges about their lived realities do not show up in water access metrics because root causes of vulnerability are more multifaceted than just whether or not a household is able to obtain water. When we isolate water challenges from issues of housing or urban poverty, we may learn some aspects about the dynamics of water access (small-scale providers versus large-scale providers, for instance). However, in many ways, these numbers conceal more than they explain, contributing to poor policy outcomes.

Water access is more unequal than the statistics show

Our survey of urban poor households lends overwhelming evidence to how complex these challenges are and how few of the inequities are able to be accurately measured in water access metrics. In a representative cross-section of urban poor communities in Metro Manila, most households in our study had access to piped water. However, the access was insecure and inconsistent. Many households are forced to cope, facing extremely challenging trade-offs in how to access and use water in fulfilling daily needs. Figure 1 shows these strategies, which include measures like collecting rainwater and how many households have to cope by reducing water use.

If these are coping strategies during ‘normal’ times, one can imagine struggles during COVID-19, when having access to water and sanitation is even more critical. In our survey, households reported a drop in monthly incomes during 2020. For people who were making less than US$1.5 per capita a day prior to COVID-19, a decrease in income signified even less money to spend on water (Figure 2).

In Metro Manila, one of the author’s research found that unequal and insecure water access is linked with planning processes of formal and informal housing in urban areas. People like Luz, one of the participants in our household-level survey, have been campaigning for the right to formal housing for the past 35 years. Those without formal housing are forced to collect water from elsewhere, such as a neighbor’s piped connection. For Luz, every day is Day Zero, when she does not have enough water. She must stand in a queue to collect water at the scheduled time, however early in the morning or late at night, and pay full price even if her container does not fill during the allotted time. While she technically has access to piped water through her neighbor, Luz cannot get her own water connection because she lives in an informal settlement.

Piped connections like Luz’s neighbor’s are an anomaly that came from past negotiations between local government institutions and one of the two private concessionaires who were tasked to provide water to Metro Manila’s residents. Some of the other piped connections in our household survey are tapped illegally by small-scale water providers (locally called ‘syndicates’) or through organized efforts by water cooperatives. These inequalities are invisible in current metrics. Luz and most of the urban poor in Metro Manila are technically counted among populations living in areas with at least 90 percent of piped access (Map 1). However, the specifics of their access—the fact that they do not have secure, stable, or formal water access in their own home—is not captured in the statistic.

Inequality in housing is missing from the metrics

Getting more detailed facts on the ground tells a more complete story about both water access and inequality. Living in an informal settlement excludes people from securing individual water connections for their household, leaving them at the mercy of various water providers. An alternative option is living in a resettlement site, but resettling does not ensure access either, since these places often lack water, electricity, and jobs. As a result, people come to Metro Manila in search of basic amenities, find an informal place of residence, and become trapped in a vicious circle of oppression.

This relationship between water access and insecure housing conditions is not limited to Metro Manila or other cities in developing countries. The situation also exists in developed countries where disparities in water access among urban residents are associated with insecurity of housing. These patterns suggest broader, complex challenges tied to systematic exclusion related to water and housing.

We need much more information about water delivery and household access. However, an increase of piecemeal information about water access will not adequately prepare local and international policymakers to address water needs of vulnerable populations. As evidence from around the world indicates, people who were struggling to make ends meet before the onset of COVID-19 are slipping into further insecurity. With the upcoming increase of climate-related risks in cities, their conditions will likely become worse. During the 2019 water crisis in Metro Manila for instance, when drought caused a severe water shortage in the city, urban poor households suffered immensely even when they technically lived in households with piped water access.

Even as climate change worsens, the populations do not have to be sentenced to misery. We could ensure research and evidence-based initiatives on water are addressed as part of the broader social, political, ecological, and economic context. Getting it right is important for people like Luz, who are already living with daily water scarcity, and other social groups such as refugees and migrants, who are more vulnerable. We do not have to wait to imagine the fallout of a future crisis. As the devastating social, political, and economic effects of COVID-19 show, crises deepen the grooves of inequality in societies.

In a world that is becoming increasingly divided, Sustainable Development Goals present hope for people across the globe. Securing water for everyone is thus not merely an academic exercise; it has daily implications for vulnerable populations.