The application of water poverty mapping in water management

Water management has been carried out for many centuries wherever there has been a need to provide water to large numbers of people. Complex social norms have developed around water management and competing users have established political (governance) and economic cooperative relationships. For example, community-managed irrigation schemes in Bali and the cloud-collection canals built by the Incas at Inca Pirca in Peru are examples of water management systems which still currently supply water to people (Sullivan et al., 2005). Water resources will steadily decline because of population growth, pollution and expected climate change (Hemson et al., 2008). It has been estimated that the global demand for water doubles approximately every two decades (Meyer, 2007) and that water will even become as expensive as oil in the future (Holland, 2005). “In the year 2000, global water use was twice as high as it was in 1960” (Clarke and King, 2004:19). Unfortunately this trend is expected to continue. The aim of this paper is to describe how water poverty mapping as a process can be used to assist the management of our already scarce water resources. It constructs a water poverty map after which it describes its application at various management levels. The research indicates that the mapping process can be used to obtain more accurate predictions, as well as to form part of the master plan and integrated development plan documents. Keywords: Water management, water poverty mapping Disciplines: Water management, geographical information systems (GIS), poverty studies, decision support