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

建设应对水危机的能力被认为是当今人类社会面临的主要挑战之一。在撒哈拉以南非洲，这种压力尤其严重，那里的快速城市化和经济增长-加上气候变化的挑战和不可持续的水管理做法-造成了缓慢燃烧和迅速发生的水资源压力。在各国政府努力为家庭和企业提供安全、充足和可靠的水供应的同时，这些行为体正在采取其他方式来保障水供应，以确保自身的复原力。个别机构在塑造集体复原力成果方面的作用是复原力研究中探索最少的领域之一，但经验表明，当政府的行动能力达到极限时，这一作用至关重要。我的奖学金解决了这一差距，并加强了对个人选择和城市地区及其更广泛社区的累积复原力之间相互作用的理解。它汇集了人类和超越人类的复原力概念，以更全面地了解结构和机构在塑造复原力成果方面的范围，以及这对加强水资源紧张城市的城市水资源复原力治理的影响。研究强调了个人行动对个人和集体复原力结果的积极影响。它还确定了这些选择所产生的复杂的溢出效应，包括对水质的风险、过度抽取以及水获取不平等的复合经济和社会影响。这个更新的建议建立在我的研究金的前四年进行的研究，现在考虑现有的做法对未来的治理安排的影响，特别是考虑共同治理的方法。该提案的一个关键方面是进一步探讨个人行动如何通过适应（和不适应）行为改变城市供水结构。该研究结合了来自全球南方和全球北方的知识，以支持对复原力概念的更具包容性的理解。该研究继续关注四个相互关联的案例研究背景：尼日利亚的拉各斯;南非的开普敦;纳米比亚的温得和克和坦桑尼亚的多塞特。还保留了跨学科的方法-结合水文地质学，行为科学和人文地理学的见解。

Building resilience to water crises is recognised as one of the primary challenges facing human society today. The pressures are particularly acute in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), where rapid rates of urbanization and economic growth - combined with the challenge of climate change and unsustainable water management practices - create both slow burn and rapid onset water stress. As governments struggle to provide safe, adequate and reliable supplies of water to households and firms, these actors are implementing other means of securing their water supplies to ensure their own resilience. This role of individual agency in shaping collective resilience outcomes is one of the least explored areas of resilience research, yet experience demonstrates it is of vital significance when governmental capacity to act is stretched to its limits. My fellowship addresses this gap and strengthens understanding of the interplay between individual choices and the cumulative resilience of urban areas, and their wider communities. It draws together human and more-than-human concepts of resilience to provide a fuller understanding of the scope of structure and of agency in shaping resilience outcomes and the implications of this for strengthening the governance of urban water resilience in water stressed cities.Initial research has identified the nature of individual water practices and revealed the choices underpinning these practices. The research has highlighted the positive effects individual actions can have, both for personal and for collective resilience outcomes. It has also identified the complex spillover effects resulting from these choices, including risks to water quality, over-abstraction and compound economic and social effects of inequalities in water access. This renewal proposal builds on the research undertaken in the first four years of my fellowship to now consider the implications of existing practices for future governance arrangements, with a particular consideration of co-governance approaches. A key aspect of the proposal is to further explore how individual actions can act to transform the structures of urban water supplies through adaptive (and maladaptive) behaviours. The research combines knowledge from the global south and the global north to support the development of a more inclusive understanding of resilience concepts.The research continues to focus on four, linked, case-study contexts: Lagos, Nigeria; Cape Town, South Africa; Windhoek, Namibia, and Dodoma, Tanzania. The inter-disciplinary approach is also retained - combining insights from hydrogeology, behavioural science and human geography.