An Environmental Justice Issue

Having drifted a little from the focus of women in Africa in relation to water, this week I have looked at an article by Nghana Lewis entitled ‘An Issue of Environmental Justice: Understanding the Relationship among HIV/AIDs Infection in Women, Water Distribution, and Global Investment in Sub-Saharan Africa’. Whilst this article is a little dated (published in 2009) it focuses on linking two challenges that sub-Saharan African women face: HIV/AIDS and water.

Lewis remarks that when analysed together within this specific context, HIV/AIDS and the water crisis actually represent an environmental justice issue, particularly as among those living with HIV/AIDS across the globe, 70% are women of African descent (Lewis, 2009: 40). He argues that insufficient governmental management of water distribution has increased the vulnerability of women to health issues including HIV/AIDS. Additionally, he links this back to policies put in place by European powers during the period of decolonisation in Africa, which he suggests have resulted in clean water being unevenly distributed within Sub-Saharan Africa with rural women bearing the greatest burden of this.

This article is extremely interesting, and one I would encourage readers of this blog to explore as Lewis is one of few academic writers who has specifically linked HIV/AIDS and the water crisis and framed this from the perspective of gender. I have already explored, within a previous blog post, sanitation issues for women in relation to water in Africa, but to reconsider this by looking at the specific issue of HIV/AIDS has been particularly enlightening as this really demonstrates just how important it is to view water issues from the perspective of gender (though  it worth remembering that this is certainly not exclusive to Africa).

This led me to a more recent article by Krumdieck et al. (2016) entitled ‘Household water insecurity is associated with a range of negative consequences among pregnant Kenyan women of mixed HIV status’. This article suggests that water insecurity has a serious role in the health outcomes of women, particularly pregnant women, with HIV in Africa, though it is not entirely clear what this role is. They assessed the water insecurity experiences of 323 pregnant women in Kenya with mixed HIV status. Shockingly, 77.7% had had at least on experience of water insecurity in the past month.

Again, this article clearly links issues of water with HIV/AIDS issues for women. Both articles call for a serious need to address these issues via stronger government policies. A key issue is that of unequal distribution between rural and urban communities as well as between the poor and wealthy. By creating the better distribution of clean and safe water among all citizens of Africa, these articles suggest that health issues such as HIV/AIDS will be at least partly addressed and this will positively benefit women in particular by extension. However, that is not to say that distributing safe and clean water throughout Africa is by any means a simple task, but articles like this are clearly trying to encourage decision-makers to at least begin to address this problem.

References

Krumdieck, N.R., Collins, S.M., Wekesa, P., Mbullo, P., Boateng, G.O., Onono, M. and Young, S.L., 2016. Household water insecurity is associated with a range of negative consequences among pregnant Kenyan women of mixed HIV status. Journal of Water and Health, 14(6), pp.1028-1031.

Lewis, N. (2009). An Issue of Environmental Justice: Understanding the Relationship among HIV/AIDS Infection in Women, Water Distribution, and Global Investment in Rural Sub-Saharan Africa. Black Women, Gender & Families, 3(1), 39-64.