The Water Poverty Index in rural Cambodia and Viet Nam: A holistic snapshot to improve water management planning

For developing countries, adequate domestic water supply is conventionally assessed at international and national levels as the proportion of households that are “covered” by improved water sources. However, this measure has been acknowledged to be insufficient to account for the complex factors, including socio‐economic, governance and environmental issues that can limit water use and access in developing countries. Because of this, there is concern that safe water access and use is not being measured accurately, leading to a poor understanding of domestic water and poor water planning and management choices. The Water Poverty Index (WPI) is a holistic tool that aims to address some of these wider issues. The WPI comprises five components that together provide a snapshot of how water poor a household is. This research undertakes concurrent conventional and WPI assessments of domestic water in five rural villages across Cambodia and Viet Nam. It is concluded that conventional measures had a relatively limited connection to how water was used by many respondents and that in the study villages, conventional measures did not predictably determine whether adequate quantities of safe water were used by individual households. It is argued that local, holistic water assessments at selected sites may support and triangulate conventional measurements of domestic water and improve water management planning and policy in rural developing areas.