Emerging evidence on the linkages between climate change and sanitation, for mitigation and adaptation

This week, we held a long awaited webinar about emerging evidence and action on the climate-sanitation linkages, on May 29th. The webinar was the result of a collaboration between the International Water Association (IWA) and the Climate Resilient Sanitation Coalition (CRSC), and aimed to provide an overview of the emerging evidence on the linkages between sanitation and climate change both from mitigation and adaptation perspectives.

Nat Paynter from UNICEF moderated the webinar and introduced the overall objectives of the event. He also pointed out that tackling the impacts of climate change on sanitation systems and addressing the contribution of sanitation systems to greenhouse gas emissions are equally important objectives. Kate Medlicott from the World Health Organization (WHO) followed with an insightful introduction to why climate change matters in the discourse about sanitation systems and vice versa. She provided an overview of some of the implications of the impacts of climate change on sanitation, such as what happens to sanitation systems when there is water scarcity or flooding, as well as how much sanitation systems contribute to greenhouse gas emissions. She also pointed out implications of these inter-linkages on human health and wellbeing, on the health of freshwater and marine ecosystems, and on overall societal resilience to shocks. She concluded with short history of the Climate Resilient Sanitation Coalition, its work and membership so far, as well as the Call to Action released at COP27 in 2022.

Kate’s presentation was followed by Jose Gesti from Sanitation and Water for All, who focused on sharing the emerging evidence and actionable strategies to enhance climate resilience in the sanitation sector. He pointed out that the focus of the work of the coalition is on people living in high-risk climate impacted areas who either have insufficient access to sanitation services and hence they need new resilient infrastructure and associated services to be established, as well as those who already have access to sanitation services but their infrastructure needs to be retrofitted to align with climate smart objectives. Jose emphasized that climate-resilient sanitation has become a global priority, aligning with the Paris Agreement’s global goal on adaptation. He outlined the new global framework adopted at COP28, which aims to reduce vulnerability and enhance resilience across various sectors including water, food, health, ecosystems, infrastructure, livelihoods, and cultural heritage, all of which have linkages to sanitation. He highlighted ongoing efforts to develop a definition and indicators for measuring climate resilience in sanitation systems, as well as the efforts to revise Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and the opportunity therein to align mitigation initiatives in sanitation with the Global Methane Pledge. He also pointed out that there is need for increased climate finance to support these initiatives in the sanitation sector and to this end, the CRS Coalition is actively working with the Green Climate Fund to develop guidelines for designing climate resilient sanitation projects, as an annex to the GCF’s Water Security Sectoral Guide.

The panel discussion which followed Jose’s presentation was moderated by me. It featured insights from Amelia Wenger of the Wildlife Conservation Society who informed us about the critical role that freshwater and marine ecosystems play in sequestering carbon and why sanitation systems should be designed with conservation objectives in mind so as not to endanger the important contribution of these ecosystems to climate mitigation. Sanyu Lutalo of the World Bank shared with us emerging insights from the bank’s analytical work on climate resilient sanitation initiatives in various cities around the world, from Lusaka to Los Angeles to Singapore and many other cities. Meera Mehta of CEPT University provided an overview of an ongoing project in India to integrate climate considerations in the sanitation work of three cities, including using solar energy for powering WASH operations, scheduled desludging using electric trucks, urban forests as carbon sink units at wastewater and faecal sludge treatment facilities, as well as safety training and sensitization for sanitation workers. Finally, Juliet Willetts from the University of Technology Sydney shared about the challenges of monitoring climate resilience in sanitation systems, and the ongoing work to develop indicators for this that can be integrated in the JMP and GLAAS processes.

The session ended with a Q&A segment, where panelists addressed questions from the audience, reinforcing the collaborative effort required to tackle the complex challenges posed by climate change on sanitation systems. It was a nice way to get an overview of the emerging evidence from various research initiatives about the sanitation-climate change linkages, and how this evidence is being applied in policy processes and practice at global and sub-national levels. Of course, one can only cover so much in a webinar of 75 minutes but with so many ongoing initiatives covering various aspects of mitigation and adaptation in sanitation systems, there is a lot of new insights to look out for on these topics in upcoming events and engagements e.g. at World Water Week, the annual SuSanA meeting, the WEDC conference etc.

More info about the webinar, the slides from the presentation and the recording will be available here.