Climate variability and weather extremes, such as droughts, floods and cyclones, already pose considerable risks to the delivery of sustainable water and sanitation services. Climate change is likely to increase these risks, and introduce new water-related challenges as sea levels rise and glaciers melt. In short, climate change is water change.
Climate change has the potential to undermine hard-won gains in the water and sanitation sector. And it is those who have contributed least to the problem – poor and marginalised communities across the developing world – who will bear the brunt of its effects.
However, climate change also presents a number of opportunities. Focusing on climatic risk, both present and future, forces an explicit consideration of water and sanitation service sustainability and the changes required to ensure services keep functioning no matter how the climate changes. Climate change can, therefore, be used to draw attention to, and take action on, the unacceptable rates of failure of water and sanitation interventions in many developing countries.
Climate change is also an opportunity to direct more finance to the water and sanitation sector, and to ensure that this financing is used to extend sustainable services in the world’s poorest and most climate-vulnerable communities. Guaranteeing this will require donors to shift their investments to supporting systems that deliver sustainable and resilient water and sanitation services.
The overarching objective of the WaterAid Climate Finance Initiative is to work with national and sub-national governments, global funders and sector colleagues to ensure that the development opportunities presented by climate change are realised.
This briefing note sets out the rationale, objectives and strategy for the WaterAid Climate Finance Initiative.