The link between clean water and food security has been significantly underestimated by those engaging in international development relief efforts. Drawing on his research conducted in the Dodoma region, Tanzania, Ariel Aviram demonstrates how clean water accessibility is in fact a vital factor in alleviating food insecurity.
Almost every component of a healthy society relies on accessibility of clean water along with food and nutrition security. Food security is defined by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) as the availability and the access of food to all people, whereas nutrition security demands the intake of a wide range of food that provides essentially needed nutrients. Available, accessible and affordable clean water is a key pillar in allowing households to achieve and maintain stable nutritional security through enabling production and purchase of various foods.
However, despite the conceptual understanding of this linkage, water insecurity and nutrition have traditionally been treated as independent challenges. To date, there have been few studies examining how the accessibility of clean water affects the household level of nutrition security. International organizations often take a similar approach to these challenges and treat water and nutrition interventions independently with little interaction between them. The majority of global efforts to alleviate poverty at the household level focus on bolstering food and nutrition security rather than improving water security.
In light of these factors, the TAU Water Research Center and Innovation: Africa (iA) cooperated on a joint study in 2022 to evaluate the impact of water accessibility on dietary intake in villages in the Dodoma region, Tanzania. The Dodoma region (Figure 1) was selected as the research area due to the high levels of water and nutrition insecurity in addition to the limited scope of information about it. This article presents the main findings of the study that indicate a clear correlation between water accessibility and food and nutrition security.
As an overview, iA water projects are finalized with the installation of a groundwater borehole, pump, water tank and water distribution infrastructure within the chosen villages. An off-grid solar energy system supports pump operation to a 10,000-liter tank located at the top of a water tower (Figure 1A) and pipes distribute water to various tap points scattered in the villages (Figure 1B). This water is primarily used for the households’ daily needs, small scale farming and livestock irrigation (Figure 1C).
1. iA intervention: A. Water well tower, B. Distribution point, C. Livestock irrigation
In order to evaluate the impact of water accessibility on nutrition diversity in the villages where iA had implemented these water systems, several methodologies were undertaken. Firstly, 436 households were surveyed quantitatively across eight villages where four villages had received iA intervention (treatment group) and another four who had not received iA intervention (control group) (Figure 2). Secondly, 34 in-depth interviews were conducted with village leaders and key players. The collected data was then analyzed using two international indicators developed by the FAO for assessing nutrition security: 1) Food Consumption Score (FCS) that calculates the overall nutritional value of a household during the last seven days prior to the survey. 2) Household Dietary Diversity (HDDS) that calculates the diversity of food that a household has consumed over the last 24 hours prior to the survey. 
2. Location of selected villages
The findings of the survey and interviews indicate a direct link between the accessibility and availability of water and improved nutrition security. As can be seen in Figure 3A and B, the reduced walking distance to collect water resulted in increased levels of nutrition security.
Figure 3. A. Correlation between walking distance to water and FCS. B. Population percent distribution within FCS levels, by distance to water and FCS category
In the control group, we found that the local methods to manage the challenges of chronic water scarcity tremendously consume time, energy, and income. This was in contrast to the treatment group who benefited from improved water accessibility, and now had significantly more time to spend with families, be in school and engage in economic activities.
Overall, there are five factors that may be responsible for this difference which accordingly demonstrate the causality link between the accessibility and availability of clean water to the improvement in the nutrition indices (Figure 4).
Figure 4. Five key causal factors
1) Water availability for cooking has increased; therefore, more meals and different types of food can be prepared. Following iA intervention, the availability of water for cooking increased, making cooking simpler and easier particularly because most local dishes are grain-based and require cooking. Moreover, the increased amount of water, thanks to the ease of access allowed by the taps system, also encourages more varied meals.
For villages without access to water, it is almost impossible to cook when the household's daily water supply is finished because of the long distance to the water source. This results in household members skipping meals which can have negative consequences, specifically for children.
2) Accessibility of clean water led to economic improvement due to decreased expenditure on water. In the control group without iA intervention, the average price of a twenty-liter bucket including water transportation, costs 500 TZS which is 10.4% of the daily rural income in Tanzania (4,777 TZS). This price will also increase or decrease based on the season and transportation distance required. By contrast, for the treatment group with iA intervention, the price for one bucket from the iA well costs a fixed price of 50 TZs. This is a considerable saving for households that use an average of four to eight buckets daily. As an additional advantage, the iA intervention reduces the overall load from the old water sources since most residents in the post-intervention villages rarely use them.
3) In addition to the immediate savings in daily expenses on water use, the intervention has been a positive catalyst for the economic independence for women. As the reliable access to water distribution points makes water a close and available resource, many have more time to start business initiatives that improve their financial situations, especially during the dry season when agricultural income and cash crop is low. As the primary managers of household water, women now have opportunities to contribute to their families’ income by selling groceries or homemade beer and stew (Figure 5). Due to this increase in household income, a wide variety of products can be purchased including expensive meat, fish, fruits and vegetables that would not have been typically accessible, thus improving nutrition security significantly.
Figure 5. A local woman who started a small business following the intervention (according to interviews), Dodoma region 2021
4) Accessibility to water has enabled the improvement of pupils’ dietary diversity. Interviews conducted with parents, teachers, doctors and nurses indicate that most primary school children in the region have a low level of dietary diversity. The main reasons behind this are a lack of access to clean water, chronic shortage of varied food and parents who are unaware of the developmental importance of a varied diet. Given these circumstances, the daily diet of many primary school-aged children is based mostly on Ogaly (millet bread) and potato leaves without any additional nutritious food. In the villages where intervention has taken place, principals have been able to initiate feeding programs based on parent donations of maize and millet that can now be cooked on the premises with the easier access to water, making a valuable contribution to the nutritional security of these pupils.
5) The intervention supports the development of kitchen gardens. Given large-scale crop production is susceptible to the natural elements, kitchen gardens can act as a supplementary source of vegetables and fruit. Accordingly, the availability of water enables these kitchen gardens to flourish by ensuring an available and affordable source of irrigation throughout the year. The high number of kitchen gardens in the iA villages contributed considerably to the nutritional diversity by increasing nutrition security.
According to these results, providing accessible and easily accessible clean is essential to increasing the level of nutrition security which has far-reaching consequences for education and economic empowerment. Accordingly, if future intervention policy planners approach water and nutrition challenges as an integrated unit, measures such as iA's water projects could substantially improve the state of global food and nutrition security in developing countries in line with the UN's goals for water and nutrition (United Nations, SDGs).
REFERENCES:
Aviram, et al. An Impact Evaluation of Clean Water Availability and Accessibility on Nutrition Security in the Dodoma Region, Tanzania. Tel Aviv University, 2022.
United Nations. (n.d.). The 17 goals | sustainable development. United Nations. https://sdgs.un.org/goals
Ariel Aviram
