Climate change is aggravating water scarcity worldwide. In rural households lacking access to running water, women often bear the responsibility for its collection, with adverse effects on their well being through long daily time commitments, physical strain and mental distress. Here we show that rising temperatures will exacerbate this water collection burden globally.

Robert Carr, Maximilian Kotz, Peter-Paul Pichler, Helga Weisz, Camille Belmin &  Leonie Wenz

Using fixed-effects regression, we analyse the effect of climate conditions on self-reported water collection times for 347 subnational regions across four continents from 1990 to 2019. Historically, a 1 °C temperature rise increased daily water collection times by 4 minutes. Reduced precipitation historically increased water collection time, most strongly where precipitation levels were low or fewer women employed. Accordingly, due to warming by 2050, daily water collection times for women without household access could increase by 30% globally and up to 100% regionally, under a high-emissions scenario. This underscores a gendered dimension of climate impacts, which undermines womens’ welfare.

As anthropogenic climate change continues to alter our planet1, impacts on water resources are set to become increasingly severe2. Coupled with increasing urbanization, some estimates forecast that between one-third and one-half of urban populations will face some form of water scarcity by the year 20503. The physical determinants of water availability are changing as global temperatures rise and precipitation patterns shift. On the one hand, rising temperatures fuelled by anthropogenic emissions increase rates of evapotranspiration, which depletes groundwater resources4. On the other hand, an intensification of the hydrological cycle5,6,7,8 is shifting patterns of precipitation1 and intensifying the variability of precipitation at seasonal and interannual timescales9,10. These physical drivers are also subject to regional uncertainties11,12, painting a risk-laden picture of future water availability.

In households without running water, women (and often children) bear most of the burden when collecting this much-needed resource13. Domestic water responsibilities are a strong contributing factor to women’s well being in such households, even without the additional stress of climate change. The physical burden carries the risk of injury14, and there is also evidence of potential psychological distress15,16. Beyond collection, women also tend to be responsible for water storage, usage and disposal, taking up considerable time during the day17. For example, the United Nations estimates that in Malawi, women spend an average of 54 minutes per day collecting water, compared with just 6 minutes for men18. As a global collective, women and girls spend up to 200 million hours daily on this task18, reducing the time available for education, employment, childcare and other daily responsibilities. In extreme cases, women can find themselves locked in a state of ‘time poverty’19, with limited opportunities for activities that could improve overall welfare. Furthermore, regional studies demonstrate that under water scarcity, these negative effects on women’s welfare and employment are often exacerbated20,21,22, with vulnerabilities often intersecting with other inequities23. In the context of a changing climate, the burden of water collection on women’s welfare may therefore be an overlooked societal impact that could be exacerbated as water scarcity intensifies

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