Climate change is water change.
That’s the message for this year’s World Water Day, which takes place on Sunday.
In the poorest parts of the world, the challenge of climate adaptation is looming fast.
Of course, we have seen climate change impacts across the world, from fires in Australia to intense flooding in the UK, where I live.
But this is nothing compared to what people in developing countries face, and the gap between the haves and the have-nots is most pronounced in cities where the lucky few have ready access to water come what may, and the unlucky majority do not.
In Mozambique last year, Cyclone Idai ripped the city of Beira apart, destroying entire communities where people had been living in flimsy housing on floodplains. The damage was so great that thousands of people have had to resettle many miles from where they had been living, and many of those are still without basic services, with some even living in tents.
In Mozambique, thousands of people living in informal settlements in Beira were displaced by Cyclone Idai. A year later, many are still living in tents with the most basic access to clean water or a toilet..
Climate change affects water in so many ways, from the complex to the straightforward:
At the individual level, hotter temperatures mean families need to drink more water in the day. When people have a tap in their house, they barely think about it. When going out and buying water can take hours, this is a major challenge in daily life.
At the community level, water shortages mean water connections can be cut off for entire days, and on the opposite end of the spectrum, overflowing sanitation infrastructure can pollute low-lying areas, spreading disease.
At the utility level, making sure that as much water as possible gets to the customer is vital as water becomes more scarce. Leakages, for example, can be a major disruptor on a utility’s ability to serve residents.
At the citywide level, leaders need to become much better at planning. Where will they get their water? How can water be shared equitably between the major consumers (agriculture, industry, residents)? How can services be made more efficient, so that all residents can access clean water?
Yet despite all these issues, not enough attention has been paid to how the climate crisis is a water crisis.
Indeed, the Paris Agreement—the key global document responsible for driving climate action— never even mentions water. Are we missing an opportunity to tackle the climate emergency through improved water management?
Of course, some global initiatives focus on adaptation. The Global Commission on Adaptation published its flagship report in September 2019 and will hold a Climate Adaptation Summit in the Netherlands in October 2020, to help accelerate action towards adaptation.
The Green Climate Fund has committed USD 5.5 billion, of which it aims for 50 percent to go towards climate adaptation work, spread across Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, and Latin America.
But overall, it doesn’t seem that the concept of investing in water as a central means of adapting to harsh new climate realities is gaining traction.
At a national level, we need more leaders who can take their cities and communities towards solutions.
Leaders such as the Mayor of Freetown in Sierra Leone, Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr, who at the recent Water and Climate Summit hosted by HRH Prince of Wales, highlighted the critical role that a well-functioning water and sanitation system can play at a city level to strengthen of adaptation and resilience in the face of climate change.
At a recent event organised by WSUP, one of the speakers questioned the lack of global, coordinated action around tackling the water crisis.
In the UK we talk about the “David Attenborough moment” that occurred in the fight to cut plastics waste, after the renowned television presenter focused on the issue in the Blue Planet II documentary series.
In the end, after years of small scale and largely ineffective campaigning from pressure groups, all it took was for a series of brilliantly captured images of sea life caught up in our detritus, for the national government and businesses to sit up and start taking action.
We need our own David Attenborough moment in the water sector. We need to find a way to show how climate change is water change, and that for the future well-being of our cities—and therefore, most humanity—we need to take rapid action on climate adaptation, now.
image credit: WSUP / Stand Up Media. In Mozambique, thousands of people living in informal settlements in Beira were displaced by Cyclone Idai. A year later, many are still living in tents with the most basic access to clean water or a toilet.
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