By Lyla Mehta, Professorial Fellow, Institute of Development Studies (IDS), UK

hat energy is to mitigation, water is to adaptation.” These wise words were said by the late Professor Saleemul Huq, Director of the International Centre for Climate Change and Development in Dhaka, Bangladesh (cited in WaterAid, n.d.). Huq was a global voice on climate justice, especially for the countries and people most vulnerable to climate change (but responsible for less than five per cent of global emissions). As our planet is increasingly confronted by floods, droughts, sea-level rise and melting glaciers, it is clear that most of these extreme weather events are around water. In 2023 alone, Asia witnessed 79 disasters, that killed over 2000 people and affected nine million people. Over 80 per cent of these extreme events were water-related namely floods and storms (Indian Express, 2023) Furthermore, there are also growing uncertainties due to co-located water-related hazards, e.g. droughts followed by floods, even in areas such as North Gujarat in India normally considered to be drought-prone.

All this makes water lie at the heart of climate action and adaptation. The problem is compounded by the fact that despite decades of global programmes and actions around water and sanitation, around 2 billion people (26 per cent of the population) lack safe drinking water, while 3.6 billion (46 per cent) lack access to safely managed sanitation. Added to which only 56 per cent of domestic wastewater is safely treated. These water and sanitation insecurities significantly undermine the adaptive capacity of poor and vulnerable people in coastal cities, deltas, drylands, urban informal settlements and remote rural areas to deal with increasing climate shock and stresses. When disasters strike, they affect water and sanitation systems, increasing water-borne diseases and malnutrition, especially for children. This makes water a key contributor to climate risks and uncertainties and also a key factor in climate adaptation (Rahman et al., 2023).

Yet, until recently water largely remained invisible in global climate debates and agreements. In part, this has to do with the nature of water, resources with mostly local, national or regional attributes. Even though about 80 per cent of countries that signed up to the Paris Agreement mentioned water as a key adaptation priority in 2015, water was rarely mentioned in the annual COPs. It was only in COP28 that all parties and stakeholders were called to “significantly reduce climate-related water scarcity, enhance resilience to water-related hazards, and realise a climate-resilient water supply” (Michel, 2023).

Yet there remain many challenges in ensuring that these actions are actually implemented on the ground, and in ways that will actually benefit poor, vulnerable and marginalised groups. Often planned interventions are narrowly framed around either too little water (scarcity) or too much water (floods) with ‘solutions’ that predominantly focus on top-down, capital-intensive infrastructure development or market-based solutions for optimising water-use efficiency (Srivastava et al., 2023).

In reality, water is a contested resource where physical availability doesn’t necessarily translate to access. Instead, access is more determined by caste, class, gender, race, public policy, institutional arrangements (both formal and customary), power and politics. Moreover, diverse sectoral needs, competing policies, interests, and political and economic actors tend to determine who gets water, when and where, and thus affect water distribution in all its dimensions (availability, access, quality and stability of supply) (Mehta et al., 2019). There are also risks of maladaptation that can inadvertently increase vulnerability to climate change. For example, in the Indian Sundarbans, embankments and engineered flood control have been implemented without recognising their impacts on poor and marginalised islanders, their ability to maintain structures and also ways in which vulnerability may be transferred to other locations thus leading to ‘cascading’ maladaptation that can reinforce or worsen current vulnerabilities. Many climate and water interventions often ignore local and Indigenous concerns and knowledge which must be the focus of adaptation responses. It is also important not to blame all water-related disasters on climate change. For example, so many recent flooding disasters in the Himalayas are more due to poor water management and development strategies in an ecologically fragile area than unexpected heavy rainfall.

In conclusion, it is important to recognise and embrace perspectives from ‘below’ and recognise the inherent uncertainty and its political nature as we seek to anticipate and respond to water-related extreme events. Decontextualised and top-down policies will invariably hamper appropriate adaptation processes (Mehta et al., 2022). This necessitates the need to embrace hybrid perspectives and knowledge and find ways to create convergences between water and climate policies and adaptation strategies that are locally led and rooted and push for inclusion, social justice and equity.

References:

1. (n.d.). How water in 48 countries is key to the success of the world’s most important climate summit. Financial Times. Retrieved from https://ft-bc-cms.herokuapp.com/partnercontent/wateraid/how-water-in-48-countries-is-key-to-the-success-of-the-worlds-most-important-climate-summit
2. Indian Express. (2023). Asia disasters 2023: Extreme weather killed over 2000, WMO report. The Indian Express. Retrieved from https://indianexpress.com/article/india/asia-disasters-2023-extreme-weather-killed-over-2000-wmo-report-9285807/
3. Rahman, M. F., Mukherji, A., Johannessen, Å., Srivastava, S., Verhagen, J., Ovink, H., Ligtvoet, W., & Olet, E. (2023). As the UN meets, make water central to climate action. Nature. Retrieved from https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00793-9
4. Michel, D. (2023). Water and global climate action at COP28. CSIS. Retrieved from https://www.csis.org/analysis/water-and-global-climate-action-cop28
5. Srivastava, S., Mehta, L., & Naess, L. O. (2022). Increased attention to water is key to adaptation. Nature Climate Change. Retrieved from https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-022-01277-w
6. Mehta, L., Oweis, T., Ringler, C., Schreiner, B., & Varghese, S. (2019). Water for Food Security, Nutrition and Social Justice. Routledge.
7. Mehta, L., Adam, H. N., & Srivastava, S. (Eds.). (2022). The politics of climate change and uncertainty in India. Taylor & Francis. Retrieved from https://www.routledge.com/The-Politics-of-Climate-Change-and-Uncertainty-in-India/Mehta-Adam-Srivastava/p/book/9781032190785

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this piece are those of the author/s and do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of AIDMI.