Climate change and the WASH sector
Climate change, and its potential impacts, is making headlines worldwide. But, will climate change also pose new or additional challenges to the WASH sector? Or, will increased investments in climate change adaptation be an opportunity for strengthening sustainability of WASH services? IRC is getting involved in this discussion and documents relevant to this topic will be published in this folder.
Climate change working group
Climate change, and its potential impacts, is making headlines worldwide. But, will climate change also pose new or additional challenges to the WASH sector? Or, will increased investments in climate change adaptation be an opportunity for strengthening sustainability of WASH services? A working group is being established which will discuss these issues. This folder contains information about this working group.
Advocacy postcards
The Working Group on WASH and Climate Change has developed postcards with advocacy messages. These can be downloaded here.
Adaptation of WASH services delivery to climate change
This Thematic Overview Paper (TOP) is targeted at WASH professionals and practitioners who recognise the need for climate change adaptation, but are not sure what to do or how to plan for it. It recommends a range of practical and well-proven methods and tools for managing risk and uncertainty linked to climate change and other factors for WASH practitioners to use.
Read more or download TOP24_WASHandClimateChange.pdf (3.3 MB)
Perspective document: relevance of WASH governance to climate change adaptation
As input into the 5th World Water Forum IRC wrote a perspective document, in which it attempts to lay out its understanding of climate change impacts in the sector, and implications for adaptation measures. Rather than considering these impacts in isolation, the paper considers climate change as one of many important and uncertain external factors that can have a profound direct or indirect effect on WASH services delivery. It discusses whether improved WASH governance can play a role in dealing with these uncertainties enhance in climate change adaptation efforts.
Please refer to this paper as: Batchelor, C., Schouten, T., Smits, S., Moriarty, P., and J. Butterworth (2009) Climate change and WASH services delivery: Is improved WASH governance the key to effective mitigation and adaptation?. Perspective paper, prepared for the 5th World Water Forum. IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre, the Hague, the Netherlands
14. WASH Services Delivery.pdf (1.3 MB)
Briefing note: Adaptation of WASH services delivery to climate change, and other sources of risk and uncertainty
This briefing note is targeted at WASH professionals and practitioners who recognise the need for climate change adaptation but are not sure what to do or how to plan for this and may already be struggling with major challenges of improving or maintaining current WASH services. More specifically this briefing note recommends that WASH practitioners use a range of practical and well-proven methods and tools for dealing with uncertainty, which is not necessarily caused by climate change, to identify and prioritise viable adaptation strategies.
CC Adaptation BN final.pdf (461.6 kB)
Climate change: civil society does not neglect water in Copenhagen
Unlike the official UN climate meeting, the parallel civil society Klimaforum09 did not neglect the issue of water in Copenhagen.
Vision 2030 : the resilience of water supply and sanitation in the face of climate change
This document summarizes the evidence found in the Vision 2030 Study that set out to increase understanding of how and where climate changes anticipated in the medium term will affect the drinking-water and sanitation situation.
Climate change: high adaptation costs for water sector, World Bank study says
Water supply and flood management, ranks as one of the top three climate adaptation costs in both the wetter and drier scenario, with Sub-Saharan Africa footing by far the highest costs, says a new World Bank report.
Climate change: global conference says that water must be included in COP-15 negotiations
The participants of the 2009 World Water Week in Stockholm urged that water must be included in the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP-15) negotiations in Copenhagen in December 2009. WaterCube.tv interviewed about 100 people including Stockholm Water Prize Winner Dr Bindishwar Pathak.
Public opinion survey: water tops climate change as global priority
A public opinion survey finds that people around the world view water issues as the planet’s top environmental problem, greater than air pollution, depletion of natural resources, loss of habitat and even climate change.
