Leroy Fearon | Thirst by design: Why water injustice is not an accident

Each year, on World Water Day, we are invited to reflect on conservation, climate resilience, and sustainability. These are safe conversations. Necessary but safe.

What is far less comfortable is confronting a harder truth: in many societies, water inequality is not simply a failure of systems. It is the predictable outcome of choices: economic, political, and moral.

Let us be clear. When communities go without reliable access to clean water while others enjoy uninterrupted supply, this is not merely inefficiency. It is structured disparity. It reflects whose needs are treated as urgent and whose are tolerated as negotiable.

The United Nations has declared water a human right. Yet across the Global South and even within small island developing states like Jamaica, water remains unevenly distributed, inconsistently delivered, and, in some cases, financially inaccessible. The contradiction is glaring: we affirm the right, but we operationalise inequality.

We must ask uncomfortable questions. Why are the same communities repeatedly subjected to water lock-offs, rationing, or dependence on expensive trucking services? Why do infrastructural upgrades often appear in already-served areas while marginalised communities wait years, sometimes decades for meaningful intervention? Why does billing continue with precision while supply remains erratic?

These are not technical glitches. They are policy decisions shaped by priorities. There is an economic logic at play that we rarely interrogate. Water systems, increasingly influenced by cost-recovery models and quasi-market principles, tend to favour areas where service delivery is more efficient and revenue is more predictable. In such a framework, marginalised communities, whether rural, peri-urban, or economically vulnerable, become less attractive to serve. The result is a quiet but persistent form of exclusion.

This is where water transitions from being a development issue to a social justice crisis. Because when access to water depends on geography, income, or political visibility, then water is no longer a universal right, it becomes a selective entitlement.

Even more troubling is the normalisation of this inequality. Citizens adapt. They store, ration, purchase, and endure. Water insecurity becomes woven into daily life, reducing outrage and lowering expectations. In this normalisation lies a deeper injustice: people begin to accept what should never have been acceptable.

WATER IS LIFE

Climate change is often invoked as the primary culprit, and indeed it exacerbates water scarcity. But climate change does not explain why distribution is unequal. It does not explain why some communities are buffered while others are exposed. Climate stress reveals existing fractures, it does not create them.

If we are serious about justice, then incremental fixes will not suffice. What is required is structural disruption.

First, water governance must be reoriented from efficiency-first models to equity-first frameworks. This means prioritising investment in underserved communities, even when it is costlier or logistically complex.

Second, transparency and accountability must be non-negotiable. Citizens must be able to interrogate decisions around water allocation, infrastructure development, and pricing. Silence and opacity only entrench inequity.

Third, there must be a deliberate shift in how we conceptualise water, not as a commodity to be managed, but as a public good to be guaranteed.

This is not a radical position. It is a necessary one. Because the current trajectory suggests that water inequality will deepen, not diminish. As resources become more strained, those with power will secure access, while those without will be left to navigate scarcity.

On this World Water Day, then, the call is not simply to conserve water, it is to challenge the systems that determine who gets it. Until we are willing to confront the uncomfortable reality that water injustice is, in many cases, designed, maintained, and tolerated, our solutions will remain superficial.

Water is life. But in too many contexts, access to it is governed by something else entirely: power.

- Leroy Fearon Jr, J.P, M.Sc., is a lecturer, multi-disciplinary researcher, author, geography specialist, columnist, Governor General's Achievement Awardee '24 and Governor General I Believe Initiative (IBI) Ambassador '24. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and leroyfearon85@gmail.com