Water stressed cities: individual choice, access to water and pathways to resilience in sub-Saharan Africa

地球仪的城市都面临着水危机。快速增长的人口、气候变化和老化的基础设施正在共同造成长期的水资源短缺，以及公共供水中断时的偶发性冲击。据估计，目前全球约有5亿城市居民生活在缺水的环境中，到2050年，这一数字将上升至19亿。这对社会和经济福祉以及周围的自然生态系统产生了深远的影响。这一问题在撒哈拉以南非洲（SSA）尤为严重，该地区正在经历地球仪上最快的城市化速度。2018年，南非的开普敦几乎成为世界上第一个缺水的大城市，而尼日利亚的拉各斯正在经历一场持久的水危机。面对政府无法提供可靠的供水，个人家庭和公司投资于自己的个人供水解决方案，从投资于自己的钻井和井点，到获取地下水储备，再到灰水收集。虽然个别的供水解决办法可以缓冲水冲击，但个别行动的扩散会带来累积风险。城市内过度取水、污染和获得供水的机会不平等是特别令人关切的问题，财政影响也普遍存在。最近的研究阐明了所作选择的原因，但所采取行动的规模、这些行动背后的价值观及其与更广泛的集体复原力成果的关系仍然不确定。这项研究的目的是建立基本的见解，加强我们对个人选择和特定地方的弹性之间的紧急权衡和溢出效应的理解。简单地说，弹性提供了科普突发冲击或更长期危机的能力。在更动态的情况下，如当代城市SSA所经历的那样，复原力更好地被定义为个人、系统或社会适应新情况的能力，并在必要时进行改造。然而，我们对这些转型过程如何在实践中发挥作用以及如何影响特定地区对气候、社会或经济冲击的长期复原力的理解仍然严重不足。这方面的关键是要理解个人选择和集体结果之间的相互作用。研究有三个目标。第一，加强我们对四个主要城市（开普敦、达累斯萨拉姆、拉各斯和温得和克）个别供水选择对集体社会、经济和生态结果的影响程度的了解。第二，了解构成个人行动能力的条件、规范和价值观，以便制定更有效的日常治理做法，增强城市的集体复原力。第三，通过发展一个由参与研究的研究人员和利益攸关方组成的国际社区，就城市水资源在面对自然和人为冲击时的复原力提出新的概念见解。这个为期7年的计划采用了一种新颖的混合方法，跨文化的方法来探索这一主题，并在每个城市建立强有力的实用伙伴关系。通过比较研究，它研究了个人和监管机构对水资源压力的反应如何影响每个城市及其居民对潜在冲击的恢复力。该奖学金将产生对塑造城市复原力的因素的新理解，并有助于开发符合撒哈拉以南非洲需求的城市发展新模式。该研究金是与地方行为体和全球利益攸关方（如人居署）合作开发的，旨在促进产生真实的影响。它将为城市水资源管理实践（特别是地下水）提供信息，支持四个城市的复原力议程，并直接促进可持续发展目标6：清洁水和环境卫生和11：可持续城市和社区。

Cities across the globe are facing water crises. Rapidly rising populations, climate change and ageing infrastructures are combining to create long-term water scarcity alongside episodic shocks when public water supplies fail. Around the world some 500m urban dwellers are currently estimated to live with water shortages, a figure that will rise to 1.9bn by 2050. This has far-reaching consequences for social and economic wellbeing and surrounding natural ecosystems. The problem is particularly acute in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), which is experiencing the fastest rate of urbanisation across the globe. In 2018, Cape Town, South Africa, came close to being the first major city in the world to run out of water, whilst Lagos in Nigeria is experiencing an abiding water crisis. In the face of governments' failure to provide reliable water supplies individual households and firms invest in their own personal water supply solutions, ranging from investing in their own boreholes and wellpoints to access groundwater reserves through to greywater harvesting. Whilst individual supply solutions can provide a buffer to water shocks there are cumulative risks involved from a proliferation of individual actions. Over-abstraction, contamination and unequal access to water supplies within cities are particular concerns, with fiscal impacts also prevalent. Recent research illuminates the reasons for the choices made, but the scale of the actions taken, the values underlying these and their relationship to wider collective resilience outcomes remain uncertain. The aim of this research is to establish fundamental insights that strengthen our understanding of the emergent tradeoffs and spillovers between individual choices and the resilience of particular places.At its simplest, resilience provides the ability to cope with sudden shocks or more long-term crises. In more dynamic circumstances, as experienced in contemporary urban SSA, resilience is better framed as the ability of an individual, system or society to adapt and, where necessary, transform to new circumstances. However, our understanding of how these processes of transformation play out in practice and influence the longer-term resilience of particular places to climatic, social or economic shocks remains acutely underdeveloped. Critical to this is an appreciation of the interplay between individual choice and collective outcome. The research has three objectives. Firstly, to strengthen our knowledge of the extent to which individual water supply choices are influencing collective social, economic and ecological outcomes in four key cities (Cape Town, Dar es Salaam, Lagos and Windhoek). Secondly, to understand the conditions, norms and values that frame individual capacities to act in order to develop more effective everyday governance practices for a collective urban resilience. Thirdly, to develop new conceptual insights on urban water resilience in the face of natural and man-made shocks, through the development of an international community of engaged researchers and stakeholders. The 7-year programme uses a novel mixed methods cross-cultural approach to explore this theme and develop strong practical partnerships within each city. Through comparative research it examines how individual and regulatory responses to water stress influence the resilience of each city and its inhabitants to potential shocks. The Fellowship will generate new understandings of the factors shaping the resilience of cities and contributes to the development of new models of urban development aligned to the needs of SSA. The Fellowship has been developed in collaboration with local actors and with global stakeholders, such as UN-Habitat, promoting real impact. It will inform urban water management practices (particularly of groundwater), support resilience agendas in the four cities and directly contribute to SDG 6: Clean Water and Sanitation and 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities.