Water-Bound Geographies of Seasonality: Investigating Seasonality, Water, and Wealth in Ethiopia through the Household Water Economy Approach The Household Water Economy Approach (HWEA) is a new approach that was designed in 2007-08 to bring analytical rigour to understanding the inter-linkages between water security and food security. Designed to build on approaches and methodologies that have already achieved buy-in and skills/capacity development, it has also been developed to link to and inform the livelihoods monitoring and early warning systems in place in Ethiopia. Ethiopia’s Disaster Management and Food Security Sector and the Livelihoods Integration Unit (LIU) therein currently uses the Household Economy Approach (HEA) as the analytical framework with which to assess food and livelihoods-based needs of its populations affected by a range of shocks such as those related to weather, markets, policies, or health. Many other countries, and agencies within them, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, but also in Asia, Eastern Europe, and Latin America, have also incorporated HEA into their early warning frameworks or have turned to it to better understand the livelihoods and needs of their populations. The premise behind both HEA and HWEA is that an understanding of how people will be affected by shocks or hazards in a bad year is only possible if an understanding is achieved of how people piece together their livelihoods – and in the case of HWEA, secure access to sufficient water to meet livelihoods needs – in normal years. An analysis of household economy aims to systematically determine how people live, what puts different households at risk of food or non-food shortages, and what type of responses are most appropriate (see FEG, SCUK, RHVP 2008 for more detail).