By Ella Bodor Hatfield, Political Science Major, Mentor Dr. Jami Nuñez. Billions of people still suffer from water insecurity today. Water stress levels are likely to increase amidst a warming climate, particularly in already arid and water-insecure regions. Jami Nuñez, Tara Grillos, and Alan Zarchta (2021) conducted survey research in the dry corridor of Western Honduras to analyze one conservational community-based water management strategy: household water metering.
Household water metering is an emergent but contentious method of Community-Based Management being implemented in developing communities. As a pay-per-usage market-based approach, some argue water meters can be exclusionary, and rural communities have pushed back against its usage in areas such as Jordan, Brazil, Bolivia and Kenya. Nuñez et al. hypothesize, however, that the presence of procedural justice elements, such as community inclusion in the water management decision-making process, will increase approval ratings of water metering systems.
Nuñez et al. found that the presence of procedural justice elements in the decision-making process greatly improved community members’ approval of water metering practices, as well as the metering projects’ efficiency and sustainability. These findings indicate two conclusions: first, water metering systems could be an instrumental method of climate-adaptive water resource management when used alongside procedural justice; second, a greater focus on procedural justice could greatly improve other mechanisms of community-based water management, and should be central to emerging water and natural resource sustainability initiatives.
