Proceedings of the 43rd WEDC International Conference

Climate change and sanitation: exploring intersections and blind spots in rapidly urbanising small towns of Asia and Africa

Access to water and decent sanitation service is a human right, however, its realisation has always been fraught with challenges and is likely to get magnified as structural injustices intersect with the impacts of global warming.

For instance, extreme weather events such as droughts, floods and heatwaves pose serious risks to WASH infrastructure, services and access.

This session will focus on: how should we reimagine WASH under conditions of climatic uncertainty to ensure just, inclusive and sustainable outcomes. Hosted by the UKRI-GCRF funded BROWN GOLD project, we will present findings from project sites in Nepal, India and Ethiopia, followed by a live discussion. The speakers will focus on:

1. Blind spots in the climate change and WASH debate
2. Challenges and opportunities for synergising adaptation and mitigation in WASH
3. Pathways for building climate resilient WASH futures
4. Deliberate on future directions and priorities for research in this sector

This will be a transdisciplinary panel. The audience will include researchers and practitioners working in the field of climate change and WASH. With this event, we intend to broaden the discussion on WASH and climate change and also deliberate on future directions of research to build and accelerate the momentum towards a climate resilient, low carbon WASH sector.