A View from Below: Experiences and perceptions of climate change risks to household water security

Keywords: water security, drinking water, California, environmental justice, climate change, survey
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Monday
Session Start / End Time: 2/28/2022 09:40 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/28/2022 11:00 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 7

Abstract

In addition to underlying systems drivers of water insecurity, recent studies highlight the climate sensitivity of drinking water access and use. Studies show that thousands of private domestic wells in California are vulnerable to drought-related failures (Jasechko and Perrone 2020; Pauloo et al. 2020); the negative impacts of the recent drought on vulnerable communities (Feinstein et al. 2017); and the risks to drinking water systems caused by droughts, fires and other extreme events that are amplified by climate change (Ekstrom et al. 2018; Mullin 2020; Dilling et al. 2019; Khan et al. 2015; Taylor et al. 2013). Findings from other statewide surveys suggest that most Californians see climate change as a serious threat to the state’s future (Baldassare et al. 2020) and are concerned with addressing drinking water access, especially in low-income communities (Baldassare et al. 2019), but do not allow for complex, multivariate analyses of drivers of these concerns nor their relation to one another. Here we use results from a statewide representative survey of California households’ experiences of water insecurity conducted in the summer of 2021 to explore how Californian’s experience and perceive climate change risks to household water security.

Author team: Kristin Dobbin (UCLA), Amanda Fencl (TAMU), Gregory Pierce (UCLA), Melissa Beresford (SJSU), Silvia González (UCLA), Wendy Jepson (TAMU)