Temperature and precipitation affect the water fetching time burden in Sub-Saharan Africa

Abigail Harvey Paulos, David A. Carroll, Julie Powers, Jake Campolo, Daehyun Daniel Kim, Avery Cohn and Amy J. Pickering ()
Additional contact information
Abigail Harvey Paulos: University of California
David A. Carroll: Tufts University
Julie Powers: University of California
Jake Campolo: Farmer’s Business Network
Daehyun Daniel Kim: University of California
Avery Cohn: Tufts University
Amy J. Pickering: University of California

Nature Communications, 2025, vol. 16, issue 1, 1-10

Abstract: Abstract In Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), over 75% of households lack on-premises water access, requiring residents to spend time walking to collect water from outside their homes – a time burden that falls disproportionately on women and girls. Climate change is predicted to alter precipitation and temperature patterns in SSA, which could impact household water access. Here, we use spatial first differences to assess the causal effects of weather on water fetching walk time using household survey data (n = 979,759 observations from 31 countries) merged with geo- and temporally-linked precipitation and temperature data over time periods ranging from 7 to 365 days. We find increases in precipitation reduce water fetching times; a 1 cm increase in weekly rainfall over the past year decreases walking time by 3.5 min. Higher temperatures increase walk times, with a 1°C increase in temperature over the past year increasing walking time by 0.76 min. Rural household water fetching times are more impacted by recent weather compared to urban households; however, electricity access in rural communities mitigates the effect. Our findings suggest that future climate change will increase the water fetching burden in SSA, but that co-provision of electricity and water infrastructure may be able to alleviate this burden.

Date: 2025
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-58780-9 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:16:y:2025:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-025-58780-9

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-025-58780-9

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().