science program

IPWR Fellow: Sylvia Struck, Ph.D. Candidate

Location: London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine
Amount: $50,000 for two years
Project: From Nomad to No Water? Poverty Policy and Settlement Impacts on Water Access for the Hima Pastoralists in South-western Uganda

Access to water is based on power and social relationships, but often viewed in economic terms in government policy.   The proposed research will address how the Ugandan poverty eradication policy has impacted access to water for a marginalized group and the important social dimensions around access to water that are not always well understood or addressed, particularly in government policy.

Collaborating with Mbarara University and the National Agricultural Research Organization (NARO), the research sets out to document how the Hima employ social mechanisms to access water in light of the Government’s poverty eradication policy and efforts to settle the Hima with restricted land and water by using semi-structured interviews, social and resource mapping, historical review and policy analysis.

The outcome of the research seeks to understand how the poor or marginalized gain access and control over water and how institutional mechanisms facilitate or discourage people’s access to water, how social mechanisms act in concert or independently of these mechanisms, and what governance arrangements are required to work towards meeting the Millennium Development Goals of a sustainable increase in water access.