Harnessing mobile communications innovations for water security
| Author | Alex Money,Rob Hope,Tim Foster,Michael Rouse |
| Published date | 01 November 2012 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1758-5899.2011.00164.x |
| Date | 01 November 2012 |
Harnessing Mobile Communications
Innovations for Water Security
Rob Hope, Tim Foster, Alex Money and Michael Rouse
School of Geography and the Environment, Oxford University
Abstract
Water security aims to provide safe, reliable, affordable and sufficient water for people, agriculture, industry and
ecosystems, subject to societal choices across related trade-offs and risks. Managing resource risks, delivering effective
governance, promoting financial sustainability and achieving social equity are central to achieving water security. We
explore how innovations in mobile communications have created an inclusive, secure and low cost architecture for
financial and data flows to reduce risk and enhance water security. In Africa, water security challenges associated with
climate extremes and population growth outstripping improved water services’ access are juxtaposed with its global lead
in mobile commerce innovations, including mobile water payments. Market driven expansion of mobile network
coverage and low cost, mobile handsets mean more Africans will be connected to mobile phone services than those
receiving improved water services in 2012. The confluence of rapid mobile network expansion, mobile phone ownership,
mobile water payments and smart metering technologies offer new policy pathways to water security to accelerate
progress on sustainable, safe water access, particularly for those in the greatest need and those most difficult to reach.
We chart emerging mobile water innovations in Africa and policy implications in the region and beyond.
Policy Implications
•Mobile communication innovations offer an inclusive, secure and low cost architecture for financial and data flows
that can reduce or share risk to enhance water security.
•The confluence of mobile network coverage, mobile phone ownership, mobile water payments and smart water
metering technologies has significant but uncharted potential to enhance water security.
•Innovations are being driven by the commercial interests of mobile network operators with the distributional
impacts and implications yet to be evaluated or shaped by policy and governance regimes.
•Living in rural and remote areas may no longer be synonymous with a higher risk of water insecurity as mobile con-
nectivity could permit innovative management models at scale.
1. The global water security challenge
The goal of water security is to provide safe, reliable,
affordable and sufficient water for people, agriculture,
industry and ecosystems subject to societal choices on
the associated trade-offs and risks involved (Grey and
Sadoff, 2007). There is increasing global interest in water
security due to a predicted 40 per cent deficit in water
availability and a US$22.6 trillion investment requirement
to modernize and expand water services’ infrastructure
by 2030 (Doshi et al., 2007; Waughray, 2011). Here, we
focus on water security through the lens of improved
water services access as an enduring global goal dating
back to the International Decade of Clean Drinking
Water of the 1980s followed by the inclusion of safe
water access as a Millennium Development Goal (MDG)
in Johannesburg in 2002 and a UN resolution of the
human right to safe drinking water (UN, 2011). Despite
the well established merits and positive externalities of
securing safe water access, progress has been uneven
globally with Africa making slowest progress and pre-
dicted to meet the safe drinking water access target
twenty years late in 2035 (AICD, 2010; Cairncross et al.,
2010).
Water security in Africa
Risks to water security in Africa are associated with
increasingly, unpredictable climate extremes, weak gov-
ernance and regulation, an annual US$9 billion financing
Global Policy Volume 3 . Issue 4 . November 2012
Global Policy (2012) 3:4 doi: 10.1111/j.1758-5899.2011.00164.x ª2012 London School of Economics and Political Science and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
Research Article
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