{"id":12641,"date":"2016-11-04T16:54:50","date_gmt":"2016-11-04T20:54:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/digital.hbs.edu\/platform-rctom\/submission\/how-climate-change-is-jeopardising-access-to-basic-sanitation-facilities-for-2-5-billion-people\/"},"modified":"2016-11-04T16:54:50","modified_gmt":"2016-11-04T20:54:50","slug":"how-climate-change-is-jeopardising-access-to-basic-sanitation-facilities-for-2-5-billion-people","status":"publish","type":"hck-submission","link":"https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/platform-rctom\/submission\/how-climate-change-is-jeopardising-access-to-basic-sanitation-facilities-for-2-5-billion-people\/","title":{"rendered":"How climate change is jeopardising access to basic sanitation facilities for 2.5 billion people"},"content":{"rendered":"

What\u2019s the issue?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

748 million people worldwide lack access to safe drinking water, while 2.5 billion do not have access to basic sanitation facilities [1].\u00a0 Climate change\u2019s primary impact is on the water cycle, making the provision of safe drinking water and adequate facilities to the world\u2019s poor an even more challenging task.<\/p>\n

Access to clean Water and adequate Sanitation and Hygiene facilities (WASH) is a major priority for the international development community.\u00a0 Improvements were targeted in the United Nation\u2019s Millennium Goals (MDGs) and subsequently in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), but still in 2015 a child died every minute of every day due to a water related disease [2].\u00a0 The developing world countries that face the majority of these issues are also those that are least able to cope with natural disasters and changes in water levels (whether it be flood or drought).\u00a0 They are also often those already affected by climate change, and so likely to see WASH issues compound as the effects of climate change become more pronounced.<\/p>\n

There are many NGOs whose activities are explicitly dedicated to WASH programmes (e.g. WaterAid [3]), while others will integrate it into programmes that primarily focus on a different functional area but recognise the importance of this fundamental issue (e.g. education programmes will often contain training on basic hygiene techniques and school infrastructure projects will often chose to concentrate on providing adequate toilet facilities).\u00a0 The design of these organisations\u2019 programmes, how they chose to allocate precious resources and where they concentrate their advocacy campaigning is all very much affected by climate change.<\/p>\n

How, specifically, does climate change present more challenges to WASH programmes?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n