Water is an essential and critical natural resource for living. According to Bhadra and Bhaskar Singh (2003, 93-109), it “gives control and plays a vital role in rural livelihoods because crop production, aquaculture and livestock depend on its contribution to food security and income generation from rain fed”. Most scholarships on rural livelihoods (see Chambers and Conway 1992; Ninan and Lakshmikanthamma 2001; Pangare and Karmakar 2003; Prasad and Mishra 2007; Bhattacharya, 2008; Devi and Mishra, 2013; Devi and Mishra, 2014) are dependent to a great extent on natural resource bases like water. This is because water plays a significant role in ensuring food production, preservation and security, which are responsible for sustaining livelihoods, especially in rural communities. The effectiveness of livelihood strategies is dependent among most rural dwellers on the ability to maintain food security for the majority.
Water shortages are seriously constraining increased food production in Sub-Saharan African countries as food production and supply are closely connected with consumption and access to water (see Patnaik 2012). Narendra et al. (1996) observed that lack and insufficient supply of enough water resources greatly negatively affected gross domestic production, thus bringing poverty to rural dwellers and a reduction in the quality of livelihoods.
The association between poverty and water has been documented to be affected by three main elements, mostly for rural people whose lives are so linked with water. Firstly, in fetching water, women consume valuable time which can be used on or shared among other important things, and this has placed a great burden on them. Secondly, poor quality and lack of water can result into devastating illnesses and diseases. Thirdly, when water is limited, it reduces opportunities for “irrigation of vegetables and fruits in home gardens”, which can affect agricultural productivity (Critchley and Brommer 2003, 41-45). The first and second elements were observed among the rural dwellers in Ese-Odo, Ile-Oluji and Ose. The limited and, at times in some places, lack of water are regarded as one of the major causes of poverty in these communities.
Water availability can affect the nutritional status and quantity of drinking water, because it is closely linked to human welfare and health, both of which cause distress to the poor. In Zimbabwe, ‘these difficulties are more acutely felt among the poor households and in the agricultural subsistence economy in Africa’s poor” as in Nigerian rural villages and areas (Wole and Ayanbode 2009, 287-295).
Zimbabwe, among the African countries, has been projected to become water stressed by the year 2025 (with less than 1000m3/capita/year), while the country has been said to have been at the risk of water stress since 1990 (see SADC 2002). The crisis of water was identified as being far beyond physical water scarcity, and as being a result of governance, as documented at the Second World Water Forum held in 2002 (see Arriens and Alejandrino 2004) where delegates resolved to institute reforms in the water sector to improve water governance, and manage water resources in Zimbabwe in a sustainable way. In some African countries like Zimbabwe, water resources have been recognised and wisely used to improve human welfare, achieve economic growth, and therefore reduce poverty. Combating poverty is the main challenge for achieving equitable and sustainable development; this was recognised in the “Ministerial Declaration of the International Conference on Freshwater held in Bonn and that water plays a vital role in relation
to human health, livelihoods, economic growth as well as sustaining ecosystems” (Merrey et al.
2004,145-164); also water scarcity was recognised as an important environmental limitation to development.
According to Derman and Hellum (2003), the claims of water restructurings being empirically focused on making livelihoods possible, among other things, have been unable to properly address the issues around poverty and development at the grassroots level. However, van der Hoeck (2001), Delgado and Zwarteveen (2007) and Devi and Mishra (2013) argue that recognising the ability and capabilities of people to manage their water sustainably can improve rural development and, unless there is new action that can help to identify the roles water plays in rural livelihoods and social justice, water scarcity will continue to threaten and change people’s options in production, employment, exchange and their relationships among these activities in ways that will eliminate the peasant rural dwellers. For example, in Nigeria and around Ondo, indigenous approaches to water management are being used as a form of survival among the rural dwellers, and have improved water supply, availability and livelihoods for many rural dwelling people. Relationships of cooperation are improved when people have water- dependent livelihood strategies. Indigenous water management activities can be used to contribute a good water system. People can survive with limited water provision and water scarcity can unify social action when the rights of both women and men are protected. In Ondo, enhanced gender-based rural water governance can diversify livelihoods and reduce vulnerability, especially for peasant traders and farmers. How societies choose to govern their water resources, whether using a gender-based approach or sustaining a patriarchal model, has enormous effects on people’s livelihood opportunities and sustainable management of water resources, because the livelihood opportunities of low income groups, like the ones in the villages, depend directly upon sustained access to natural resources and indigenous materials,
Therefore, an improved and all-gender inclusive nature of water governance and management coukd provide one keystone to alleviate poverty, more especially among women living in these villages (see Ellis 2000).