Background
Water is the primary medium through which climate change influences the Earth’s ecosystem and thus the livelihood and well-being of societies. Climate change directly impacts water resources and water services for all economic, social and environmental functions that water supports. Therefore, the impacts reach into many sectorial interests such as health, tourism, agriculture and industry. With water scarcity and extreme weather events becoming the new norm in many parts of the world, it’s crucial to note that the effects of climate change would be felt first and foremost through water systems.
According to the COP29 Declaration on Water for Climate Action, 2.2 billion people globally have limited access to safe drinking water, and an estimated 3.5 billion people lack access to safely managed sanitation. In Africa, where water and sanitation infrastructures are already strained, the situation is becoming increasingly dire due to growing climate adversities. For instance, the UNICEF/WHO Joint Monitoring Program on WASH estimates that a total of 411M people in Africa still lack basic drinking water service, 779M lack basic sanitation services (208M people still practice open defecation) and 839M still lack basic hygiene services. Rapid urbanization, concentrated in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, is placing cities and towns in acute stress, forcing people to live in overcrowded slums with inadequate, often non-existent, water and sanitation services. Already, 700M urban dwellers live without improved sanitation and 156M live without improved water services. A total of 24% of urban poor households in India depend on communal or shared sanitation facilities; and 1.2M people living in slums still drink untreated water, while 63% of the households lack access to enclosed drainage systems. As a result, many poor households are forced to ration water and resort to poor hygiene practices.
Extending and securing access to water and sanitation services could play a key role in poverty reduction. Households could benefit through a range of health, educational, nutritional and broader livelihood impacts; local, regional and national economies could also benefit from greater economic activity, spending and investment; and over the longer term, households and economies could benefit through greater resilience to climate change. In monetary terms, the numbers are compelling: combined water supply and sanitation interventions have a combined return of at least US$4.3 for every dollar invested (Hutton, 2012), if services can be sustained in the face of multiple risks, including that posed by climate change.
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