Water Crises Are Being Worsened by Wealthy People’s Swimming Pools, According to a New Study
Water crises are caused by several factors, but a new study calls out one group in particular for the ways in which they’re using up a vital resource: wealthy elites.
According to a paper published in the journal Nature Sustainability, rich residents in urban areas are contributing to water crises by partaking in nonessential activities like filling their private swimming pools, watering their gardens, and washing their cars. Those actions could affect cities “at least as much as climate change or population growth,” the study says, according to The Washington Post.
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“Urban water crises can be triggered by the unsustainable consumption patterns of privileged social groups,” the report adds.
In the study, researchers focused on Cape Town, South Africa, but said the findings were relevant to cities around the world where high inequality also abounds. For this project, Cape Town’s residents were divided into five groups based on income. In the end, the two wealthiest groups were responsible for more than half of the city’s water consumption, despite making up less than 15 percent of the population. That increased usage was mostly due to nonessential activities, while the lower-income groups mainly used water for necessities like drinking and hygiene.
That’s pretty bad on an everyday level, but even during times of drought, the wealthy groups were further impacting water resources. Along with the public water supply, higher-income residents would dig boreholes to get to groundwater, effectively creating their own private water supply. Besides further entrenching inequality, that threatens the long-term water resources for the whole city.
It may be heartening to hear that when Cape Town worked to reduce water consumption across the board, wealthy groups cut their usage the most. Yet, that was only because they stopped filling their pools and using water excessively. Their water usage was still extremely elevated when compared with that of the poorer residents, who had to cut back on bathing, doing laundry, and cooking.
“Socio-economic inequality drives urban water crises of today and tomorrow,” Elisa Savelli, the lead author of the study, told the Post. “We need to rethink disaster as a social-environmental issue” and create policies targeted at “the injustices, imbalances of consumption.”
Until then, cities from Miami to Sydney, London to Beijing, will feel the effects of the dual threats of water shortages and overconsumption.
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