A recent study published in Nature Climate Change forecasts that climate change may force women to spend up to 30% more time collecting water by 2050, particularly impacting regions in South America and Southeast Asia.
The devastating effects of climate change on water resources could profoundly alter daily life for millions of women around the world. A groundbreaking study published in Nature Climate Change predicts that women may need to spend up to 30% more time fetching water by 2050 due to rising temperatures and reduced rainfall. This increase could mean that in some regions, such as South America and Southeast Asia, the time spent on this crucial task might double.
A team from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) conducted the study, highlighting the potentially severe welfare losses climate impacts could inflict, particularly on women. Currently, 2 billion people globally lack access to safe drinking water, and the task of fetching water usually falls to women and girls.
“Climate change leads to rising temperatures and alters rainfall patterns, affecting the availability of water. We show that for women in households without running water, the time spent for collecting water will increase in almost all regions analyzed under future climate change,” Robert Carr, the study’s author and guest researcher at PIK, said in a news release.
From 1990 to 2019, women without household running water globally have spent an average of 22.84 minutes per day collecting water. This time varies significantly depending on the region — ranging from four minutes in parts of Indonesia to a staggering 110 minutes in some areas of Ethiopia. Carr noted that this daily allotment could increase by up to 30% by 2050 under high-emission scenarios. However, if global warming is mitigated to remain below 2 degrees Celsius, this increase might be limited to 19%.
“Regionally by 2050, daily water collection times could double under a high-emission scenario, for example, in regions across South America and Southeast Asia. For regions in eastern and central Africa that currently have the longest water collection times, temperature rises in a high-emission scenario would cause increases of between 20 and 40 percent,” the study’s co-author Maximilian Kotz, a postdoctoral researcher at PIK, said in the news release.
Currently, women globally devote up to 200 million hours daily to water collection, equating to losses in time that could otherwise be spent on education, work, or leisure. This task often imposes both physical and mental strain.
Economically, the cost of this lost working time is staggering. Under a high-emission scenario, these losses could translate to tens to hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars per country annually, according to the researchers.
Based on historical data from household surveys in 347 subnational regions across four continents from 1990 to 2019, the research team correlated climate variables — such as temperature and precipitation changes — with increased water collection times.
“We find that higher temperatures and less rainfall have increased daily water collection times,” Kotz added.
These changes, influenced by climate, affect the balance between evaporation and precipitation, lowering water tables and making fresh water harder to access, he explained. Additionally, heat stress can make the journey longer and more uncomfortable.
The researchers used temperature and precipitation projections to assess the impacts of future climate changes on daily water collection times under various emission scenarios.
“Our results shed light on a gendered dimension of climate change impacts. They show how strongly climate change will affect women’s well-being, causing them to lose time for education, work and leisure,” said author and PIK researcher Leonie Wenz.
This study underscores the critical need for climate action to mitigate these projected increases. It highlights a dimension of climate change that profoundly affects women’s daily lives and overall well-being, necessitating targeted interventions to alleviate these impacts.