Dear Peter,

I'm delighted to learn that you have been to Pakistan. I'm based in Karachi. Peshawar is far away from here. I once went to Peshawar in Dec 1988 for a month-long training at NIPA, Peshwar, on Environmental Management. And, then, we went all the way to up Malam Jamba (about 6,000 ft above MSL) - and I fell terribly ill - severe cold!!

The floods in Bangkok in 2011 made Samsen Waterworks, Bangkok, dysfunctional for some time. This was also pointed out by friends at water and wastewater management seminar, at ADB, Manila, in Nov. 2011, which I attended.

The 3 recent floods in Pakistan ripped off water and sanitation facilities in Sindh province.
It is said that the floods were as the results of effects of climate change.

I do not know those Peshawar friends of yours. I'm, however, enjoying your interesting and useful posts.

Smiles!

F H Mughal

Dear all further to my initial post triggering this exchange and the replies I have given in the mean time, please read the call for evidence and experience that I'm currently sending out to all in my world-wide network that I know of being (in)directly involved in WASH.

I'd appreciate if you could come with as concrete and locally relevant evidence and experience with starting to address climate related issues in the WASH sector. Thanks a lot - Peter

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Dear...

I'm trying to understand whether any (developing) country's WASH sector is explicitly working on making the WASH sector (infrastructure, but not only) more climate resilient. As you are familiar with what happens on the ground in several countries, you may give me some hints and links to evidence or alternatively confirm my impression that still very few if any country's WASH sector is working on this. Note that I'm looking for WASH sector experience, not IWRM or Land Use planning, where I think a lot starts to happen and where really things should happen, because raising latrines against flooding or building concrete castles around water-points are only combating symptoms caused by bad practice in other sectors (mainly related to land-use), wouldn't you say so?

I am currently working on advice on integrating a Climate Resilient Development (CRD) approach into (national) Water Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) sector strategic planning. This piece of work is undertaken in the context of a broader package on Climate Resilient Development in the WASH sector on request of GWP and UNICEF.

I am contacting you in search of any evidence or concrete practical experience with addressing climate (extreme) variability and long term climate change specifically in the WASH sector (so not the broader IWRM context).

If you have any suggestions on (re)sources that know about or document such experiences, I would very much appreciate to get access to these either on the Internet or via contact you may provide me.

My request has some urgency as the deadline for producing this first guidance for national WASH strategic planners and policy makers is near.

Thanks so much for giving this a thought and maybe coming back to me with some suggestions. If helpful I'm also willing to contact any suggested persons by phone, in which case I ask you to provide the necessary contact details.

I post on this topic through various channels using the #WASHCRD tag.

Have a good day, kind regards
Peter J. Bury
skype: profbury
gmail/hangout: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Dear Julian

Thanks so much, and apologies from my side to be slow. I forgot about this platform and also to set notifications for new posts. I will check all this now to make sure that I'm around more in time!

I surely know of ODI's work through your colleague Eva Ludi (& friends) who are on our consortium team!

I would certainly like to bounce ideas with you, if possible at fairly short notice, as our time to produce initial outputs runs out (though if all goes well our client will ask us to continue to work on this).

How can I best reach and talk to you? I use Skype (profbury) and Google Hangout This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . Please let me know maybe best directly to my email address! I will look on your profile page to see what options you offer.

Thanks, Peter

Dear Chris

Thanks for this, may I ask you (I know it sounds be bit selfish to focus on how to make WASH services and infrastructure more resilient to climate change phenomena? Thanks!

As for the context I'm working on this at the moment: UNICEF and GWP have asked the consortium I'm part of (HR Wallingford and ODI in the UK) to trigger the WASH sector to address climate issues more seriously than it seems to have done so far. For this we are developing a Strategic Framework and a number of Technical Briefs or guidance papers if you like, starting with (1) what can be done at community level and how and (2) what can be done in the short and medium term at the (national) WASH sector strategic planning level. These initial components of a wider package should become available early 2015.

I will keep you posted here, Peter

[Start of Page 2 of the discussion]


Dear F H Mughal

Thanks for the link. You may imagine that as an old hand at IRC, I am aware and familiar with this publication

More to the point, I'd like to invite you to come up with any evidence from where you work that climate variability and change is indeed affecting WASH services and/or infrastructure. And if so, if the WASH sector is reacting to this and if so in what specific way?

PS. I do not know where you work, but having been several times in Pakistan, I have to ask you if you know some of the dedicated people that work in and around Peshawar (f.e. Iftikhar Hussain; Muhammad Jahangir; Farooq Abbasi Khan; Masroor Ahmad and many many others . If you know many people and you think climate resilience in WASH is a key theme, I'd suggest you set up a discussion group or invite them here!

Cheers, Peter

Dear Chris

Thanks for your contribution and advocacy for UDDT (I had to read your full contribution to remember what it stands for . You may know Richard Holden, a good friend of mine, who surely agrees with you! Sorry for my late reaction, hope you are reading me.

What I think we need for each potential solution that contributes however little to make WASH services (here sanitation) more climate resilient is to provide a checklist that guides a decision-maker (at any level) when and maybe when not this solution is indeed the appropriate one.

Why? Because each context is different. Each expression of climate variability or long term change is different. Not everywhere water is becoming scarcer! Flooding is also often an issue, so is the increase of frequency of extreme weather (storms of all sorts), or landslides due to erosion.

Without had the time to read more in detail you blog, my question is thus, have you worked on technology selection criteria, pre-requisites, etc... for UDDT?

Thanks, Peter


[End of Page 1 of the discussion]

Dear Denniskl

Thanks for your question and sorry for such a late reaction!
No I'm not raising (technical) design questions in specific.

Rather I'm looking for people working in or with WASH or any of its subsectors (at any level, in any role) that in general have started to look into if and how climate variability or structural change affect directly or indirectly WASH infrastructure or WASH services in general. If anyone has, then the question is "what have you started to look into".

Please also read a new more elaborate question I will upload here in a few minutes, which hopefully explains better what I'm looking for.

A big question to me is: can WASH become climate resilient at all, or is it very much dependent on what other sectors responsible malpractices in for instance irrigation; agriculture; overgrazing, deforestation, poor settlement choices do about adapting these to reduce climate related risks that may also affect WASH infrastructure.

To give a very simple example: does it really help to elevate latrines / toilets to keep them dry during flooding, or should one look in a much more broader way if an how such flooding of settlements can be reduced or better completely eliminated (for instance through better drainage systems or larger scale protection of settlements, or even more radical consideration of moving settlements to safer places).

Peter

Thanks, Julian. That is great!

I would, however, request ODI to kindly develop adaptation to CC manual in WASH sector for Pakistan. That would be a great contribution by DFID/ODI for Pakistan.

Regards,

F H Mughal

Hi F H Mughal,

Not yet, but keep an eye on our large DFID/IDRC-funded CARIAA project, known as PRISE (Pathways to Resilience in Semi-Arid Economies) (no project website yet, but here's the donor website: www.idrc.ca/en/programs/agriculture_and_...ails.aspx?NewsID=620). This project will be looking at water sector and green growth strategies for several countries, including Pakistan and Tajikistan.

We also have a project with BGS that's surveying groundwater resources in the Indo-Gangetic basin. Again, no publications out yet, but you can see a brief of the project here: www.odi.org/projects/2670-groundwater-re...-indo-gangetic-basin

Thanks and best wishes,

Julian

Dear Julian,

That is an interesting study on adaptation to CC in WASH in Africa. Does ODI have similar study for Pakistan or South Asia?

Regards,

F H Mughal

Hi Peter,

Apologies to have missed your question from July until now, but glad it has been revived.

I work for the Overseas Development Institute, the UK's leading international development think tank. In our water policy team, we have done a lot of work on this exact topic of climate resilient WASH and water resources management.

Please allow me to share our most relevant resource with you - a three-country assessment we did for DFID, where we built a climate risk screening tool for national and donor-level WASH investments and a modified cost-benefit analysis method for assessing potential adaptation options.
Here's the link: www.odi.org/publications/8154-climate-ch...ash-water-sanitation

Please do get in touch if you'd like to discuss more, and do also peruse our website for more useful reports and opinion pieces on the subject.

Many thanks,

Julian Doczi
Research Officer, Water Policy
Water Policy Programme
Overseas Development Institute, London, UK

Hi Everyone,

Dennis, I am glad you found the Minimalist UDDT on my blog interesting and I look forward to hearing about your trials of it:
inodoroseco.blogspot.com/2013/10/a-free-...ist-uddt-part-1.html
(Remember to follow to Part 2 for more explanation of its functionality,
inodoroseco.blogspot.com/2013/10/a-free-...ist-uddt-part-2.html)
Yes, privacy structures are very important, but are independant of the actual toilet. Part of this minimalist concept is that it could be applied in a corner of a slum dwelling (maybe with a curtain) or out in a field with palm leaves stuck in the ground around it. I propose that this be considered a solid, bottom rung in the ladder of functional, dependable and acceptable UDDTs, and one that can be applied in extreme poverty, emergencies, or to gain experience and demonstrate understanding of the UDDT concept, with essentially no monetary investment.

Elsewhere on my blog, there are more elegant and permanent models of UDDT.

I am sure that the 96-page document that Mughal posted must have some very important analyses, but, to me, it seems to be only bla bla bla. For example, in no place does it even mention the UDDT or the concept that if water resources become more limited maybe we should avoid (or reduce) mixing precious clean water with excrement. In fact, the following quote (which seems to be the only mention of the word 'toilet') seems to show that the author has little concept of water quality, blind faith that all wastewater treatment in the world is 100% effective, and/or no concept of the importance of water conservation:

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For example, in the case of a typical house connected to a
main sewer system, some 95% of the water delivered by the water utility is returned
for treatment and subsequent reuse. Regardless of this fact, wild claims are often
made in respected journals that vast quantities of water can be ''saved'' by increasing
''efficiency'' through the use of low-flow showers and mini-flush toilets. Contrary to
this, the fact remains that the consumptive use of a shower bath or toilet is nearly zero if they are connected to a sewer. Just as importantly, it is invariably the hydrological
location of the diversion and return flows that determines the impact of shower or
toilet designs on total water use and consumption.
---

The author also includes the following questionable concept (or wording):

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Optimal ignorance: Optimal ignorance is understanding the difference between
what is worth knowing and what is not. This avoids the collection of too much
irrelevant data. Appropriate imprecision recognises that in conventional assessments,
much of the information collected has a degree of precision that is unnecessary and/or
is inconsistent (in terms of precision) with other information that is being collected.
---

Maybe it is optimal to keep wasting and contaminating water while looking the other way, but I do not think so.

Peter, please share with us what you find on resiliency of WASH to Climate Change. Do you have students who may want to do a thesis on this? (Does anyone else?)

Best wishes,
Chris Canaday