A paper presented by John Soussan on 21-23 January 2003, Muldersdrift, South Africa.

This paper provides an overview of the key issues needed to understand the significance of water use within the household in relation to wider issues of water security and the reduction of poverty. It looks in
broad terms at the range of uses made of water within the household and relates this to the dynamics of the livelihoods of poor people from different segments of society and in different settings. It also sets out the wider context of household water use in relation to different aspects of access to and the availability of water resources. Finally, the paper considers how the issue of household water use relates to
overarching global and national development frameworks as expressed in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) agreed at the UN Millennium Summit in 2000, the outcomes of the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) and national policies and development priorities such as the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs). These issues are discussed in more detail below, but the overall message is that the concentration on consumption rather than productive uses of household water has meant that the development significance of household water use has been under-estimated. [authors abstract]