The Right to Water: A Framework for Microcredit Strategies

Tebaldo Vinciguerra () and Enrico Gabriele
Additional contact information
Tebaldo Vinciguerra: University LUMSA
Enrico Gabriele: Independent Researcher

A chapter in Eurasian Business and Economics Perspectives, 2025, pp 265-284 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract Inadequate access to potable water is a major problem for 2.2 billion people and related financial challenges are daunting. This paper studies the performance of a microcredit initiative in India implemented by the charity Water.org which disburses loans to low-income borrowers to improve their access to potable water. Due to the complexity of such initiatives, we suggest to employ a holistic indicator named “human right to drinking water” (HRDW) based on five criteria: Acceptability, Accessibility, Affordability, Availability, and Water Quality. Literature dealing with both the HRDW and microcredit for water is limited; the fact that Water.org granted us access to borrowers’ responses to its detailed surveys allowed us to assess how households’ situations evolve. Using this framework, we analyzed the responses of more than 2100 borrowers to questions directly related to the aforementioned criteria. We observed that the living conditions of the majority of them improved. There is still room to improve this study and further data availability would be appreciated. This research represents a starting point for discussion to widen perspectives on a topic that deserves a better understanding for the benefit of sustainable development, given that this initiative shows potential for growth in emerging economies.

Keywords: Access to drinking water; Human right to drinking water; Pro-poor access to water; Microfinance institutions in India (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

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:spr:eurchp:978-3-031-85312-8_14

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9783031853128

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-85312-8_14

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Eurasian Studies in Business and Economics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().