Political Ecology and Contours of Vulnerability to Water Insecurity in Semiarid North-Eastern Ghana

Abstract

Vulnerability to water insecurity in Ghana has often been characterised as a biophysical phenomenon that can be objectively solved using technical and rational approaches to manage water resources use and allocation – thus, making vulnerability to water security discourse politically neutral. Contesting this orthodoxy, this article shows the multiple mechanisms and structures that undergird vulnerability of households to water insecurity in semiarid Ghana. Vulnerability to water insecurity is often veiled in political and economic imbalances that constrain the choices of people in their daily water realities. We argue that a rigid fixation on the biophysical conceptualisation of water insecurity separates nature from society while simultaneously ignoring the lived insecurities resulting from the contours of power. Policy formulation based on this conceptualisation without addressing the access rights and differentiated vulnerabilities could be misleading while yielding minimal impact.