Advancing Sustainable Mining Through Inclusive Water Security Assessment: A Comparative Analysis in Colombia and Palestine

This study analyses the impact of mining activities on water scarcity in two contrasting mining regions: Zaragoza, Colombia, and Qabatiya, Palestine. Despite significant climatic and hydrological differences, both regions face substantial pressures on water resources and governance systems caused by mining. To assess these pressures on water security, the Water Poverty Index (WPI) has gained the attention as a holistic tool; however, its application in regions dominated by informal extractive economies presents a critical scientific gap; standard WPI methodologies rely heavily on low-resolution, macro-level secondary data, which inherently smooths out localized socio-environmental crises and creates a “compensation bias” in which temporary economic inflows mask severe ecological degradation. Furthermore, conventional frameworks fail to capture the dynamics of informal hydro-social governance, territorial conflicts, and non-conventional pollutants that characterize data-scarce extraction zones. To address this gap, this study applied four versions of the Water Poverty Index (WPI), Conventional, classic-inclusive, geometric, and arithmetic, to evaluate longitudinal changes between 2010 and 2025 under counterfactual baselines versus active extraction scenarios. The framework assessed six components: Resources, Access, Capacity, Use, Environment, and Cohesion, integrating both quantitative indicators and qualitative evidence. Results revealed that mining consistently reduced WPI performance in both localities, particularly within the Environment, Use, and Cohesion dimensions. Zaragoza exhibited a generalized decline across all WPI versions due to mercury contamination, institutional fragility, and social fragmentation associated with informal alluvial gold mining. At the same time, Qabatiya saw moderate infrastructure improvements, offset by groundwater depletion and environmental degradation from stone quarrying. The iWPI versions demonstrated superior sensitivity in capturing governance and socio-environmental degradation. The study concludes that water poverty in mining regions is multidimensional and driven by interconnected environmental, institutional, economic, and social pressures (as measured by the WPI), rather than by physical water scarcity alone.