Household water security — safe, affordable, reliable, and acceptable water for a thriving life — is a key avenue for adapting to extreme and chronic heat, particularly in cities. We argue that household water security is far from universal in the urban Global North, resulting in uneven capacities and strategies to adapt to heat, outside and within the home. We synthesize key insights to advance water security as a central plank of urban heat justice.

PurposeThis paper departs from the catastrophic floods that struck Valencia in 2024 to highlight how unplanned urbanization and excessive confidence in conventional hydraulic engineering have exacerbated flood risk in the region. Instead, we advocate for integrating Nature-based Solutions drawn from approaches to flood management by traditional Mediterranean societies, especially in the so-called Boquera irrigation systems developed in Mediterranean societies since the Muslim period and aimed at redirecting floodwaters to agricultural terraces thus reducing erosion, mitigating flood peaks and enriching soils. However, boqueras were abandoned since the mid-20th century, leading to landscape degradation, increased flood risks and loss of hydraulic heritage.Design/methodology/approachThe paper represents a synthesis of the work by the authors in the Spanish Southeast, documenting through written materials and fieldwork, the most salient characteristics of Boquera systems. Our approach is historical, but we also review current evidence of how boqueras may have inspired current solutions to flood management, for example in the design of flood parks.FindingsThe most relevant finding is the strong connection between traditional and current alternative approaches to flood management by using hydrological processes and elements such as runoff, infiltration, storage and evapotranspiration to reduce the risk component of floods and enhance the resource dimension. Table 1 contributes with current examples of flood management using NbS in the study area.Research limitations/implicationsDue to the historical approach taken by the paper no new, quantifiable materials on floods have been added.Practical implicationsWe suggest possible reference to traditional systems at the local, reginal and national scales of flood management.Originality/valueThe integration of traditional hydraulic knowledge and practice represented by boquera systems and modern alternatives such as Nature based Solutions is a novel approach in flood planning and management still little known but with an important potential.

ABSTRACT Local authorities are pivotal in promoting the adoption of decentralized alternative water sources, such as greywater reuse and rainwater harvesting for domestic non-potable water uses (e.g. toilet flushing or irrigation). Focusing on the process of updating a supra-municipal (provincial) framework to promote the use of such alternative water sources at the building scale, this paper analyzes and characterizes the evolution of local water-saving ordinances in the province of Barcelona (Spain). We analyze how local regulations mandate the installation in new buildings of alternative water systems, such as greywater reuse, rainwater harvesting or pool water reuse systems. The study aims to identify key challenges and unresolved debates that policymakers face when designing and updating these regulations. Using a mixed-methods approach that includes interviews with key stakeholders, surveys with municipalities, and participatory workshops involving both local administrations and technical expertise, the research examines the institutional frameworks that support these ordinances, the barriers municipalities encounter during implementation, and the technological and health debates surrounding their implementation. Our findings highlight the importance of supra-municipal guidance in shaping local water governance amid uncertainty about regulatory enforcement thresholds, ongoing debates over appropriate technologies for greywater reuse, and ambiguity around health standards for domestic alternative water sources.

The metropolitan area of Barcelona experienced an extreme drought from 2022 to 2025, inducing significant shifts in water management and in the public perception of water supply alternatives. Scarce and erratic rainfall, coupled with higher-than-normal temperatures in 2022 and 2023, sharply reduced runoff contributions to reservoirs, and the water stored began to decline rapidly. Several water-use restrictions were implemented by the government, following the drought planning phases of normality, alert, exceptionality, pre-emergency, and emergency established according to the water stored in reservoirs. This study analyses citizen self-reported responses to this extreme episode, including perceptions of restrictions and drought campaigns, through a survey of 700 households in the metropolitan area of Barcelona conducted in March 2025. Our survey indicates that climate change is perceived as the primary cause of the drought. However, citizens also attribute water scarcity to socio-natural factors, including infrastructure failures and the impact of tourism. Support for water-use restrictions implemented by the government is high but selective, strongly targeting discretionary uses, such as private pools and tourism, while showing less support for agricultural restrictions. Socio-demographic factors, particularly gender and age, showed significant associations with drought perception, self-reported awareness and conservation behaviour. These results underscore the need for nuanced, demographically targeted communication strategies that extend beyond crisis messaging to cultivate a sustained water conservation culture, even after drought emergencies have subsided.

Social acceptance of indirect potable reuse (IPR) in the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona (MAB) during the severe drought event of 2021-2025 is investigated in this paper through a survey (N = 700) of MAB residents. The analysis identifies the factors shaping perceptions, showing that support for purified recycled water is high (68.0%) and positively associated with the perceived severity of the drought and the degree of information about the event. The primary concern among the subgroup expressing apprehension about purified recycled water (29.6%) is the potential effects on health (96.1% of the concerned subgroup), followed by concerns over price (85.5%) and over taste/odour (78.7%). Sociodemographic factors play an important role in understanding perceptions, with women consistently showing lower support and significantly greater concern for potable reuse. We identify an association between bottled water consumption in Barcelona and concern over IPR. We suggest that drought emergencies create a temporal 'window of opportunity' for implementing IPR and that policymakers need to acknowledge public perceptions to improve communication messages if IPR is to become a new source of water in Europe.HIGHLIGHTSIndirect potable reuse (IPR) support reached 68.0% during the extreme drought suffered by Metropolitan Barcelona between 2021 and 2025. Primary public concerns about IPR are health, price, and taste/odour. Support is driven by perceived drought severity and public information (drought as an opportunity window for IPR). Association between bottled water consumption and concern over IPR. Need to consider sociodemographic factors behind IPR acceptance.

This study examines domestic water consumption in the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona (MAB) and Rub & iacute; from 2016 to 2022, covering pre-, during, and post-COVID-19 periods. Using multiscale analysis, municipalities and census tracts were classified into three clusters based on socio-urban variables, revealing disparities in water use across spatial, social, and economic contexts. The pandemic significantly increased domestic water consumption, particularly among vulnerable households, exacerbating affordability challenges. Post-pandemic, wealthier areas maintained higher consumption levels established during lockdown, while vulnerable areas reverted to pre-pandemic levels, highlighting unequal resilience. These findings emphasize the link between structural inequalities and water consumption, advancing understanding of water insecurity as a multidimensional issue. The study calls for equity-centered water management policies to address vulnerabilities amplified during crises, contributing to debates on urban water security and socio-environmental justice.

Water poverty, mostly expressed as the inability to afford the costs of water, is becoming a growing problem for European vulnerable households, despite universal availability of safe, secure, and reliable water. In this article and through interviews with 112 households in three cities of the province of Barcelona, we explore how water poverty manifests in the daily practices and coping strategies of household members. Findings reveal how these households, while not giving up uses considered essential, engage in demanding water-saving measures (e.g. reduced shower times; short washing machine programs or limited flushing) to maintain basic hygiene standards, imposing sometimes very strict behaviours particularly on children and teenagers. These, often draconian, behavioural adaptations are hardly reflected in the water bills which creates emotions of frustration and despair among respondents. Access to subsidies is also pursued with the help of non-governmental organizations and local services but lack of information, bureaucratic barriers, or legal status may hamper this option. The study also underscores gendered burdens, with women managing water austerity, and reveals concerns about private water management and inadequate water tariffs. Results advocate for policies addressing affordability by expanding subsidy accessibility and integrating poor household preoccupations into water governance. By focusing on lived realities, this research attempts to contribute to advance our understanding of water poverty in the global North, emphasizing the need for justice-oriented solutions amid economic and environmental pressures.

Urban projects based on Blue-Green Infrastructure (BGI) are increasingly developed through participatory and bottom-up processes aiming for a more just and equal supply of Cultural Ecosystem Services (CES). However, the concept of CES is shaped by underlying assumptions about valuation, governance structures, and power dynamics, which can lead to unequal access to and control over ES benefits. Furthermore, CES are often evaluated post BGI’s construction, focusing on distributive justice with limited scope for adjustments. This article investigates how pre-construction bottom-up processes shape the distribution and recognition of CES among communities and individuals. Using an Environmental Justice lens, it examines CES through three dimensions of justice simultaneously, namely distributional, recognition and procedural. This is tested for the case study of Ecovillage Hannover, an ecological housing project in Germany, developed through a bottom-up approach. After using qualitative and quantitative methods, the findings reveal that i.) the co-productive nature of CES influences their unequal distribution ii.) embracing trade-offs through discussions and confrontations is essential to address conflicting CES values; iii.) integrating quantitative and qualitative approaches supports a more holistic and just application of the CES framework. The study offers insights for public policies on the role of BGI in community-led housing projects, demonstrating how CES perceptions and justice considerations can guide more inclusive and sustainable outcomes, especially during early development stages.

Evidence shows that income and residential density, the latter associated with outdoor water uses such as gardens and swimming pools in single houses, are considered key factors in explaining variations of water consumption in urban areas. However, these findings tell us little on the role played by personal habits in water use. Measures adopted to minimize the spread of COVID-19 virus such as population lockdowns and recommendations for frequent hand, clothing, and food washing represent an opportunity to analyze how individuals behave in relation to water consumption under the same conditions and recommendations and regardless of their income or housing type. Using the case of a medium sized European city with mixed residential areas (Girona, Northeast Spain), this research investigates consumer behavior combining quantitative techniques such as cluster analysis with qualitative tools based on data provided by 35 face-to-face interviews conducted with residents from different neighborhoods of the city. Results show that changes in water use introduced during confinement do not picture a behavioral pattern aligned with the variables that, conventionally, help to explain domestic water consumption such as income. Hence the need to refocus urban water policies more towards residential land use models rather than towards specific socioeconomic profiles of residents.

Cities in water-scarce areas are looking at alternative flows to ease the pressure on potable water networks. Greywater reuse in residential buildings, capable of saving up to 30% of household water, is one of the alternatives receiving attention. The article attempts to assess the perception of greywater reuse by residents in the first town of Spain enacting legislation on this resource. Results are compared with a similar survey undertaken in 2008 showing an increase in acceptance by users but also recurrent problems of lack of information, little economic benefits, relatively high maintenance and replacement costs, and operational problems.

Este artículo aborda la problemática de la denominada “pobreza hídrica”, término que en los países desarrollados se utiliza para identificar a personas o hogares con dificultades para pagar el recibo del agua. La pobreza hídrica puede implicar cambios sustanciales en los usos y hábitos de uso de agua en los hogares con una tendencia extrema al ahorro de agua que puede repercutir en el confort y bienestar de los residentes. Además del ahorro extremo, la pobreza hídrica también estimula estrategias en forma de iniciativas para obtener subsidios y otras ayudas. A fin de investigar estas cuestiones y mediante entrevistas que combinan datos cuantitativos y cualitativos, el trabajo caracteriza los usos y hábitos de uso de agua, así como las estrategias para reducir el importe de los recibos en 40 hogares vulnerables del municipio de Manresa (Barcelona), un municipio en estancamiento socioeconómico. Entre las conclusiones más importantes del trabajo destacaríamos los enormes esfuerzos realizados para ahorrar agua sin que ello implique renunciar a hábitos de higiene y confort que se consideran imprescindibles como la ducha diaria por muy breve que sea ésta. Igualmente, la pobreza hídrica se suma a otras privaciones características de un sector de la ciudad degradado y en declive.

Water affordability as a dimension of water poverty is becoming an increasing source of concern in cities of the Global North. Studies on water affordability are either based on water wants and not needs or tend to use spatial scales too large for effective analyses of local inequities that can truly guide policy actions. In this contribution, we calculate and map a Water Affordability Index (WAI) based on the minimum water requirement of 100 litres/person/day at the scale of the census tract for the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona. We also apply global and local spatial autocorrelation analyses to investigate spatial relationships between the WAI and poverty-related sociodemographic variables. Results show that, even though average WAI values are moderate, the distribution pattern of higher and lower values tends to be clustered in some districts and neighbourhoods of the study area. Bivariate correlations indicate that water affordability is not only related to poverty variables but also to the diversity of water prices. Findings exemplify how the constructed index can complement existing affordability indicators, revealing and mapping important risk groups struggling to meet the costs of essential water needs. Water affordability could be mitigated by supportive water pricing policies for vulnerable households in water poverty hotspots.

AbstractDeliberate actions by social networks and their transformative visions can generate the necessary conditions for the emergence of positive tipping points towards sustainability, such as those that create qualitative, structural changes in sustainable development goals. However, there is a need for more empirical research conducted in non-Western countries to assess these complex processes. In this research, we customised Integrated Sustainability Assessment (ISA) and combined it with participatory narrative analysis, social-ecological network analysis and Q-methodology to capture the transformation processes in social network structures with their guiding visions in two coal- and carbon-intensive regions (CCIRs) of Indonesia: Banten and Bali Province. Our research approach tracked transformation narratives and visions and their associated network dynamics and showed that they could be used as anticipatory social tipping signals (ASTS) in deliberate transformation-oriented tipping point processes. Our study revealed two guiding visions actors use to guide their transformative actions to change the energy system. Those transformations emphasise (i) governance coordination and (ii) socio-economic diversification. We argue that making explicit the presence of and promoting dialogue among different visions towards sustainability can promote new opportunities for mutual learning and transformative strategy building among diverse social networks.

Water poverty, primarily understood as a problem of affordability, is increasingly important in developed countries. It burdens vulnerable households with mounting debts or deprives them of this fundamental resource. Faced with this threat, households may modify their habits to reduce consumption and seek also assistance to reduce the amount of the water bill. Both strategies imply stressful efforts, often exacerbated by unexpected events like the COVID-19 pandemic. Using semi-structured interviews with 35 vulnerable households in a working-class town near Barcelona, in this paper, we blend a quantitative assessment of home water habits with a qualitative analysis of strategies to reduce water bill costs. Results reveal a strong commitment to water savings but clashes with essential household needs, particularly for children. Respondents lament that despite intense water saving, bills remain high, given water's perceived expense and limited subsidy access. In sum, addressing the issue of water poverty from the subjective experience of those struggling against it in their daily lives allows us to identify situations where the basic physical and mental comfort of the more vulnerable is under severe stress. These experiences and perceptions are linked to socio-political and economic processes such as accumulation by dispossession or ecological modernization, contributing to water poverty. HIGHLIGHTS It is necessary to conceive water poverty beyond efficiency. Low-income households are double vulnerable due to a lack of knowledge and effective advice. There is water insecurity and a lack of water comfort in many low-income households. The impacts of water poverty often escape detection by social services and water supply companies. Water poverty may attain a magnitude and severity that remains socially unnoticed.

COVID-19 pandemic led to significant changes in domestic water use in many cities. One important question is whether and to what extent the pandemic stressed the resilience of the water supply system. Another question examined in the paper is whether changes in water use during confinement differed according to the sociospatial configuration of cities. We examine these questions in the context of a medium size city of Northern Spain characterized by a mix of residential land uses, and internal variations in education, age composition, and income, producing step gradients in water use. First, we select and analyze influencing factors in domestic water consumption. Second, using statistical regression tests, we assess whether or not and to what extent the same factors influenced consumption during the COVID 19 lockdown. Results indicate that COVID-19 related confinement increased work and study from home and reinforced WASH habits, leading to more water consumption. However, this increase was larger in medium and low-income neighborhoods than in high-income neighborhoods, showing the relevance of sociodemographic factors but also of other variables more relevant for outdoor water use such as precipitation. Despite this rise in consumption, the water supply system was able to withstand the shock caused by confinement showing a robust resilience both in physical and in social terms. However, more challenging scenarios such as the coincidence of a pandemic with a severe drought should be taken into account in future resilience development.

This article addresses the problem of so-called "water poverty", a term that in developed countries is used to identify people or households with difficulties for paying their water bills. Water poverty can imply substantial changes in the uses and habits of water use in households with an extreme tendency to save water that may impact the comfort and well-being of residents. In addition to extreme savings, water poverty also stimulates strategies in the form of initiatives to obtain subsidies and other forms of aid. In order to investigate these questions and through interviews that combine quantitative and qualitative data, the paper characterizes the uses and habits of water use, as well as the strategies to reduce the amount of bills in 40 vulnerable households in the municipality of Manresa (Barcelona), a municipality in socioeconomic stagnation. The main conclusion of the paper is that households make notable efforts to save water but are not willing to give up hygiene and comfort habits that they consider essential, such as the daily shower. Likewise, water poverty represents another manifestation of the precarious living conditions in old and degraded districts of the city downtown.

Climate variability in agricultural frontiers such as the subtropical zone of South America has required complex forms of human adaptation. Beginning in the 1920s, Mennonite farming in the El Chaco region of Paraguay, organized under strong communal principles rooted in religious values, has developed a food production system based on meat and dairy products that contributes significantly to Paraguayan economy but that is always subject to the vagaries of climate. This article first analyzes climate data for the period 1950 through 2016 to identify potential increases in variability in temperature and precipitation trends. Second, the article examines adaptation practices to climate variability and perceptions of climate change in the region by a variety of informants, above all Mennonite cooperatives. Although Mennonites remain skeptical about climate change of human origin, they are nonetheless implementing conservationist practices in farming that suit well the precepts of adaptation. For other collectives, though, the socioenvironmental degradation of El Chaco, for which the Mennonites are held at least in part responsible, damaging ecosystems and indigenous populations at the same time, could threaten future adaptation practices.

: Increasing economic, social and environmental limits to the development of conventional water supply sources have shifted water resource frontiers to alternative sources, most notably desalination and wastewater reuse. In the past few years, critical scholarship has been prolific in its exploration of how desalination may redraw the hydrosocial cycle in different geographies; wastewater reuse, however, has received much less attention. In this article, we aim to contribute to a critical exploration of the implications of different types of wastewater reuse for urban purposes. We do so through an examination of the case of the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona (AMB), an area with a fragile water supply system that has been undergoing a harsh drought in 2022/2023. We examine two examples of how treated wastewater may enter the residential sphere. The first involves the reuse of greywater for toilet flushing in residential buildings. The second is linked to the possibilities that advanced treatment of wastewater open up in terms of making urban water systems more robust and more resilient to recurring droughts; this advanced strategy enables both the bolstering of indirect reuse of reclaimed water for potable purposes and direct reuse through the development of dual networks of supply in new urban areas. In this paper, we attempt to unravel the different economic, social, environmental and political implications of those interventions through the lens of the hydrosocial cycle and resource frontiers. We triangulate a critical review of policy documents with informal conversations with policymakers and, in one of the case studies, previous research.