WASH and Climate Change: Two Mutual Blind Spots

It is 2050. Bombo is a small town in Central Uganda, with a population of around 30,000. Rose, a 60-year old charcoal seller, struggles to get water to drink even though she has a tap in her house. Installed decades ago as part of a water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) project by an international NGO, it has water a few days a month. Bombo is a severely water-stressed town.

It was not always so. In her younger days, the tap provided water every time she used it from a deep borehole. It helped her raise her children better and devote more time to her business of selling charcoal. Then the rains became erratic and the water from the tap turned hazardous, in addition to becoming scarce.

Rose is one of the estimated 5 billion worldwide affected by climate change-induced water scarcity[1]. In just 30 years, when the world started recognizing the impact of climate change on WASH, half the world’s population does not have safe drinking water, up from 2.2 billion in 2017[2]. (This is a factional situation based on current trends of access to drinking water and the likely impact of climate change.)

The climate change and water communities recognize that water is the primary medium through which the effects of climate change are felt. Water availability is becoming less predictable in many places, and increased incidences of flooding threaten to destroy water points and sanitation facilities and contaminate water sources[3].

In addition to the direct impact that reductions in the per capita availability of water will have, water scarcity also affects piped sewer systems that need minimum flows to operate. Water scarcity can increase the concentration of pollutants and bacterial contaminants in waste water that has a higher impact on the environment when released. High temperatures, heavy rainfall and floods can alter the incidence of diarrhoeal diseases. These can undermine the substantial gains made in public health because of improved WASH access over the past several decades[4].

But how does the WASH community perceive the risks from climate change?

“Despite the undeniable link between combatting climate change and ensuring universal access to water and sanitation, this connection is rarely reflected in national climate commitments and policies. This represents the first barrier for practical government led implementation of climate resilient water and sanitation action on the ground,” wrote Catarina de Albuquerque in 2021[5].

Further, at the other end of the sanitation chain, treatment systems for wastewater contribute to greenhouse-gas emissions (GHG) both directly through breakdown of excreta discharged into the environment or during treatment processes, and indirectly through the energy required for treatment steps. Most countries favour large treatment systems that need energy to move wastewater around. They are estimated to account for 3% of global electricity consumption[6].

Additionally, the process of reducing the biological oxygen demand of wastewater and sewage contributes about 1.57 percent to global GHG emissions and 5 percent to non-CO2 greenhouse-gas emissions[7]. Despite the evidence that GHG emissions from biological processes in wastewater treatment plants are major GHG contributors, they are not well-studied.

WASH is missing from the climate change debate. Indeed, climate change is missing from the WASH debate. For example, in India, the two ministries that deal with climate change and WASH, the Ministry of Environment and Forests and Jal Shakti, respectively, do not communicate with each other, notwithstanding the efforts of several development partners.

A recent analysis reveals that while around 9 percent of global nationally determined contributions (NDC) activities relate to SDG 6, they mostly refer to improving water management. Just 2 percent of NDCs were linked with access to sanitation and 3 percent to wastewater treatment. What is notable is that USA, Indonesia, India or China, have not included any sanitation-related mitigation activities even though they produced 50 percent of global methane emissions from wastewater, and half of recorded nitrous oxide emissions from domestic wastewater in 2000[8].

There is more evidence of the disconnect between WASH and climate change. The authors of Approved Project Proposals by the Green Climate Fund (GCF) found that until April 1, 2019, out of 99 projects approved by the GCF board, only seven had a specific sanitation or wastewater element. Of these, only five US$ 1.24 million from GCF out of a US$ 5 billion budget; this is less than 0.025 percent of approved project budgets[9]. OECD supported project commitments of US$938 million in 2017 for water supply and sanitation with climate change as a main objective. But those targeting mitigation and adaptation related to basic sanitation and large sanitation systems received only US$ 29 million, or just 3 percent of climate-related finance for WASH.

Had the two communities come together those decades ago, Rose’s water tap would have continued to provide for her and her extended family. But now, to retrofit it will be a costly affair and beyond Rose’s modest means. She and her family have learnt, out of dire necessity, to adapt.

In a subsequent article we will discuss what measures are being taken, resources are available and what organizations are working on to mitigate climate change’s impacts on WASH, while improving resilience of infrastructure and communities.