By Morgen Makombo Sikwila
Climate-resilient water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) services are crucial for addressing the impacts of climate change on public health and well-being.
Climate change exacerbates challenges to WASH access, impacting sanitation, water availability, and hygiene practices. A resilient WASH approach prioritizes adaptation and mitigation strategies to ensure access to safe and reliable services, even in the face of changing climate conditions.
The impact that climate change has on the environment and our daily lives is apparent. Floods, droughts, and other unexpected weather events occur more regularly, disproportionately affecting low-income communities.
Safe drinking water depends on the availability of clean water in the environment. If water sources dry up or are too contaminated to treat affordably, there is no water available for human consumption. When protecting watersheds, it is ensuring the sustainability of water sources. Programs in water and sanitation hygiene are driven by the need to protect human health and the environment. When promoting and investing in safe sanitation management, environmental pollution issues are prevented. Great need of work along the entire sanitation service chain, from household facility construction to emptying, transport, treatment, and disposal or reuse to prevent untreated waste from entering the environment should be number one priority.
There are several risks due to environmental degradation. There’s decreased water sources quality and quantity; vegetation, soil types, and slopes of the land surrounding water sources impacted negatively whether rainfall is stored or runs off and whether contaminants are carried to water sources. Application of agrochemicals and human and animal faeces on nearby land can impact the quality of water. As the population grows, the pressure to cut down trees to develop land for homes, agriculture, and businesses increases, and the pressure to extract groundwater also increases. Although the amount of water needed for drinking is relatively low compared to other uses, such as agriculture and industry, it is becoming difficult to find sources that are clean enough and of sufficient quantity to provide safe drinking water affordably and sustainably.
As water sources run dry and water quality worsens, service provision becomes more expensive. Alternative water sources, more storage, and additional treatment are needed and require increased investment.
As water sources quality and quantity decrease and infrastructure becomes more expensive, declines in service levels are more common. Seasonal shortages and service interruptions increase. Water quality can also worsen at specific times of year when first flush rain events carry pollutants that have been accumulating on the land over the dry season.
No place where water for people live is immune to the hazards of climate change. Climate change manifests in the form of extreme weather conditions, which affect water quantity and quality. It threatens the availability of clean water in the environment in some ways. Flashier rain events and increased flooding can cause increased pollution. For instance, intense rains on degraded lands can cause erosion and increased pollutant loads to nearby water resources. Flooding, especially in areas with limited safely managed sanitation services, can cause the spread of contaminants and some communicable diseases. Extreme events can cause disease outbreaks, such as cholera.
Increased temperatures, decreasing rains, droughts, and less predictable rains can impact both the supply of and demand for water. Supply decreases as flows reduce, and demand cycles change as weather patterns change. Both the increased pressure and the unpredictability of water supply and demand present risks. In Zimbabwe, for example, climate change is creating a detrimental cycle in communities. Long dry spells affect the profitability of agricultural production, leading communities to seek out water-based ecosystems such as wetlands. As these ecosystems cannot sustainably substitute the role of rainfall in supporting crop and animal production, this practice leads to degradation. In turn, the encroachment on these water resources vital to human activities is leading to long dry spells, among other long-term effects.
Extreme weather events such as floods and cyclones, which often come with extreme winds and landslides, can cause direct damage to water and sanitation infrastructure. In Zimbabwe, for example, cyclones are becoming more common, and some communities are experiencing water shortages due to prolonged droughts and contamination of water sources due to high runoff in some of the rain seasons.
Other impacts, such as rising sea levels, are indirect, insidious, and uncertain in nature and severity and can damage infrastructure or lead to out-migration from low lying areas. Different risks are more prevalent in different contexts, but all are relevant when considering the diverse locations. Some places, like Chimanimani and Muzarabani, experience all risks.
In recent years, climatic events, accelerated environmental degradation, and high-water demand have led to significant pollution of water sources and food shortages. Community resilience is the goal of climate change adaptation, and there is no way for a community to be resilient if the water and sanitation services are not resilient. The amount of water needed for drinking purposes must be protected to last through climate-related emergencies. This is especially true in low- and middle-income countries where communities are not causing the problem but are feeling the impacts of climate change. National plans for climate change adaptation must prioritize these communities by taking measures to mitigate these risks and recognize that resilient WASH is at the center of resilience for these communities.
The call to action to fight climate change is for everyone – companies, nonprofits, governments, and individuals must all work collaboratively to achieve climate change goals established through Sustainable Development Goal 13 and updated agreements from the UN Climate Change Conference (UNCCC) and Conference of Parties (COP).
It is paramount to mainstream climate change in all WASH and water resources management plans, programs, and policies so that they are sustainable. Governments can support through providing enabling policy environments, incentivizing water resources monitoring, and holding all actors accountable to comply with national environmental standards. The WASH sector, which includes NGOs, governments, and service providers, can combat climate change by continuing to advocate for the inclusion of WASH in National Adaptation Plans and extend that advocacy to all investors in WASH. Every stakeholder has a role to help those outside of the WASH sector see that resilient WASH is climate action.
There is a need to apply an adaption lens across all building blocks of the WASH system. This can be achieved through assessing climate-related risks and plan for too much, too little, or more polluted water sources, depending on the context and protect water sources considering the broader recharge zone through catchment and aquifer management. Service delivery schemes that can respond to unpredictable rains and droughts should be always be in place and building climate-resilient infrastructure that considers extreme weather events and floods as a priority. Inclusion of climate-resilient WASH in national finance strategies and local planning can not be overemphasised.
There is a great need to improve sustainability and efficiency of water quality and quantity monitoring systems to improve decision-making.
Ways to mitigate climate change should be identified by considering greenhouse gases in the delivery of water and sanitation hygiene services. Shifting to renewable energy sources such as solar and increasing energy efficiency across the entire service chain, from source to household for water and from household to disposal and or reuse for sanitation needs prioritisation too.
NGOs have a responsibilities to consider ways of operations contributing to greenhouse gas emissions. Their efforts cannot be undermined in strengthening communities’ abilities to adapt to climate change while continuing to contribute to the cause of climate change. They should not adopt the principle of Net Zero, which means making changes to reduce carbon emissions to the lowest amount and offsetting as a last resort. The offsetting is used to counteract the essential emissions that remain after all available reduction initiatives have been implemented, considering direct and indirect emissions. When looking across all needs and the urgency of the climate crisis, stakeholders must all act now!
When developing infrastructure projects, key players in WASH should also strengthen service authorities and providers to ensure the sustainability of WASH systems and initiatives aimed at both mitigation of and adaptation to climate change impacts. Mitigation initiatives include: the restoration of wetlands and other water resource-related ecosystems to allow regeneration; catchment-based water resources planning and implementation, including reforestation; promotion of clean energy by gradually replacing diesel-based water supply with solar pumping; and fecal sludge management, such as treatment and reuse in the form of briquettes, aimed at reducing the use of food fuel that depletes forest and vegetation cover and tree planting.
Adaptation initiatives include catchment conservation interventions in upper, mid, and downstream areas; water quality analysis and surveillance; water safety planning for water quality management; groundwater monitoring; and sanitation improvement campaigns in households and public institutions to overcome fecal contamination in surface and groundwater in times of emergencies such as floods.
Municipal policies and strategic plans should include guidelines for the protection of micro-watersheds and water sources. Communities should continue preserving forests for the primary purpose of sustaining drinking water sources. Building resilient communities is more feasible through an association linked to a solid system, such as the WASH system.
The effects of climate change demand an immediate call to action from governments, businesses, NGOs, and citizens. It is not an issue that can be postponed any longer. Access to water, so essential to daily life, is being directly affected by climate change, so it is important to include the WASH sector in climate change adaptation actions. Any NGO that aims to achieve universal and sustainable WASH services should commit to and continue advocating for climate action.
In essence, resilient WASH (Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene) solutions are crucial for adapting to and mitigating the impacts of climate change. They ensure access to basic needs like safe water and sanitation even in the face of environmental stressors like droughts or floods. By integrating climate-resilient practices into WASH services, communities can enhance their ability to withstand climate-related hazards and build a more sustainable future.
Morgen Makombo Sikwila
MSc in Peace and Governance
BSc Counselling
Diploma in Environmental Health
Certificate in Marketing Management
