A New Research Partnership to Address Equity Issues in Water
Why Investment in Social Infrastructure is Crucial to the Success of New Tech
Just under 2 million people living in the United States today do not have access to running water in their homes. Instead they collect and trade safe drinking water in buckets and milk jugs. And they’re mostly people of color.
Simply put: Water is a major equity issue here in the US as well as around the world. And it will continue to be if the solutions the federal government and researchers continue to prioritize tech and science solutions without also building the supporting social infrastructure those solutions need to succeed.
Example: Helicoptering shiny, new, one-size-fits-all water treatment kiosks into a place, dropping them off, immediately leaving, and saying, “There you go! Now you have water.”
This happens. All the time. And it does not work.
These kinds of strategies cling to old approaches in science that fail to a) collaborate across disciplines and b) consider the social and supporting physical infrastructure needed for new technology to succeed.
Helicoptering shiny, new, one-size-fits-all water treatment kiosks into a place, dropping them off, immediately leaving, and saying, “There you go! Now you have water” … it does not work.
— John Sabo
The investments we make in the US to solve this problem (like the new DOE Energy-Water Desalination Hub) will make great progress on engineering and the design of new technologies that improve our physical infrastructure. But they won’t push the needle on closing the access gap because they don’t address the social infrastructure piece.
Making Social Infrastructure as Important as Tech
Now Future H2O has the opportunity to collaborate on a new approach to addressing equity issues in water — an approach that makes social infrastructure as important as the technology itself.
Last month, the National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded ASU/Future H2O a five-year grant to examine the role investments in social infrastructure play in the success of new water treatment systems in colonias — unincorporated settlements along the US-Mexico border whose residents make up about one-third of the people in the United States without access to reliable water.
True in name to NSF’s Growing Convergence Research program, which awarded the grant, our work will fuse disciplines across engineering, computer science, education, and social science in order to evaluate informal water-delivery systems in these communities without running water and how to transform them into formal systems.
“What’s exciting about this project is that it takes social infrastructure — social relationships and institutional arrangements — as seriously as it does physical infrastructure,” says Amber Wutich, President’s Professor of Anthropology and director of the Center of Global Health at ASU, who is this study’s science lead and sponsor PI. “This approach is rare even in interdisciplinary research, and it promises to bring true convergence across a range of disciplines including anthropology, law, health, engineering, and ecology.”
While we envision eventually mounting a long-term research effort to support communities without water access all over the United States, we are focusing our work over the next five years on how to build successful water treatment systems in the colonias specifically. In these communities, residents have resorted to an informal system of water trading: goods and services for plastic milk jugs of safe drinking water.
Our work will include new technology. But rather than helicoptering it in like a bomb, we’ll be prioritizing the long-term investments in social and supporting physical infrastructure needed to sustain the technology. Without those investments, the technology won’t be useful or sustainable — no matter how new or innovative.
Our work will include new technology. But rather than helicoptering it in like a bomb, we’ll be prioritizing the long-term investments in social and supporting physical infrastructure needed to sustain the technology.
— John Sabo
For instance, investments in social infrastructure might include creating new business models; developing public health standards; and establishing an informal governance structure to enforce these new public health standards.
And investments in supporting physical infrastructure might include creating online curricula that trains local business and residents on how to use and maintain new technology.
Delivering on the social infrastructure piece can only happen through handshaking community development work — the opposite of the helicopter drop. That’s why we’re partnering with the NGO Rural Community Assistance Partnership (RCAP), which is already deeply embedded with the communities of the colonias from Texas to California. RCAP has the trust of the local communities — and trust is a major determining factor in the success of social infrastructure.
An Approach That Can Scale to Address Water Quality Access Across the United States
So, how exactly are we going to do it and how will colonia residents benefit?
- We’re conducting community-based participatory research in which we deploy supporting physical infrastructure across four communities that have varying lead times on social infrastructure — two who have what we’d consider robust social infrastructure and two who do not.
- Supporting physical infrastructure will include online education and data-sharing via an app that allows the communities to share information such as where water can be found and when water is good or bad.
- We’ll evaluate the success of the technology’s adoption and the sustainability of water treatment systems across the four communities.
- Then, grounded in a data-driven understanding of social infrastructure’s impact on investments in new technology, we’ll go in and engineer a system tailored to each community’s specific needs. Technology can’t be one-size-fits-all. For instance, one community might be trying to eradicate a certain contaminant in their groundwater; whereas another community may be dealing with contamination from poor sewage infrastructure.
- Finally, this initial approach will give us the data and tools necessary to scale solutions across all colonias spanning borderlands from Texas to California.
But the work we’re doing isn’t only focused on the communities of the colonias. Ultimately, this grant is allowing us to better understand the infrastructure needed for water treatment systems to succeed across the US more broadly — from Black communities in the rural South to Native American communities on reservations.
“This community-based participatory research will provide a model for scholars who want to use an ethical transdisciplinary framework to address water needs in water-insecure communities,” says Dr. Wutich. “The pro-poor approach of the engineering solutions provides a justice-oriented, community-based, research-focused way to address water quality concerns in the US.”
The United States is one of the most technologically advanced countries in the world — so technology isn’t the problem when it comes to equitable access to water. It’s time we focus our innovation on the social infrastructure that allows our technology to succeed for everyone.
For more information about ASU Future H2O’s work and research on creating opportunities for global water abundance, visit our website and subscribe to our newsletter.
