WASH Response to Climate Change: climate resilience and sustainability challenges

Climate change is impacting lives in the countries where the WASH SDG Consortium works. Going forward, the ways in which climate change will impact WASH services will continue to increase. These impacts will not be felt equally, and the burden of climate change is not and will not be shared uniformly. In many instances, those who are hit the hardest aren’t most responsible for the change and are more challenged to be able to absorb the shock. In the WASH SDG countries, the climate change-related challenges concerning groundwater and surface water quantity, availability, reliability and quality are becoming more diverse and occur on a larger scale of what local WASH programmes can provide.

To ensure climate resilient and sustainable WASH service delivery, WASH programmes need to innovate, work on all elements of sustainability and work with partners outside the WASH sector.

In this session three WASH SDG programmes will share how they’re adapting to diverse water-related climate challenges. They will also present a case they’re still struggling with, opening the floor to discussing how we can adjust WASH programmes to (future) climate change impacts, while making sure that rights-based approaches remain central in sector approaches and methodologies.