WASH services can reduce climate impact vulnerability: Experts

Water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) services can reduce the vulnerability to climate impacts and minimise the gaps in gender, education, prosperity and health inequalities, all of which are needed for the community and individual resilience, speakers told a programme.

These adaptation solutions need financing, which has remained insufficient to date across the world, they observed.

Their views came at a roundtable discussion on Tuesday organised by WaterAid at a city hotel where representatives from the climate and WASH sector urged proper attention to address climate impacts on WASH.

WaterAid also launched its upcoming flagship initiative titled the 'Resilient Water Accelerator' at the programme.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has identified providing water and sanitation services as one of the most effective measures to reduce climate vulnerability in the near term and as a 'low-regrets' adaptation measure.

The IPCC analysis also shows inequality in WASH allocation is high between the urban and rural areas, with cities and towns receiving the highest share of the allocated fund compared to rural, char, hilly, and coastal areas, in previous years.

In her speech, Hasin Jahan, country director, WaterAid said that Bangladesh is committed towards sustainable water management and safe sanitation services. The country needs to address the impact of climate change on WASH. She laid emphasis on paying more attention to addressing the problems of hard-to-reach areas people to achieve climate justice for all.

Fazle Rabbi Sadeque Ahmed, Palli Karma Shahayak Foundation (PKSF), said water should get the highest priority. Future project needs to align with the national strategies with priority on governance, framework and infrastructures, to ensure drinking water. Climate financing is becoming a debt burden for countries and they should focus on grant-based finance, he added.

Speakers put forward several recommendations to incorporate for the WASH sector in the upcoming national budget for the fiscal year 2022-2023. These include ensuring wealthy countries' public financing more than double for adaptation from 2019 levels by 2025, address the structural inequalities (particularly for the groups who are the most vulnerable), ensure sustainability and reliability of the support approaches that address whole WASH systems by prioritising long-term management and funding to keep WASH services reliable etc.