Opportunities for planning processes for climate-resilient urban WASH in informal settlements

Header featuring thumbnail of this resource, a policy brief on Opportunities for collaborative and integrated planning processes for climate-resilient urban WASH in informal settlements

POLICY BRIEF: Opportunities for collaborative and integrated planning processes for climate-resilient urban WASH in informal settlements

This research, undertaken by International WaterCentre at Griffith University and the University of the South Pacific, aims to answer the question: How can the climate resilience and social inclusion of WASH services in urban informal settlements be strengthened with locally adapted climate science and knowledge, planning support systems and champions?

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Key messages for policy makers

There are existing urban planning processes in Melanesian cities, however they are often reactionary, outdated, and siloed from development requirements of specific sectors.
Those with responsibility for urban planning mostly don’t consider themselves to hold a mandate to be involved in WASH (water, sanitation and hygiene) service planning, or informal settlements, and water utilities mostly don’t consider themselves as leaders in planning WASH services in informal settlements due to tenure and urban planning constraints. There are examples of this changing.
Existing planning processes for WASH in urban Melanesia mostly don’t integrate climate resilience and adaptation information, activities and impacts.
There is some progress being made in Melanesian urban informal settlements with respect to formalisation and upgrading: Fiji is currently formalising 46 settlements across the country including service provision, Solomon Water has connected over 2,800 households in settlements to piped water in the last year, Papua New Guinea’s new Port Moresby Urban Development Plan describes their ongoing settlement upgrade process, and Vanuatu’s urban wastewater taskforce is considering sanitation in urban settlements. Notwithstanding progress, WASH services remain very unevenly distributed across Melanesian urban centres, particularly in urban informal settlements.

This resource was an output of an Innovation and Impact project, Planning for climate-resilient urban WASH in Pacific Islands

You can read more about the project and the research findings in the project wrap:

The path to inclusive WASH services and climate resilience in urban informal settlements

Find out more about this research project on IWC's website.

Policy and strategy

Knowledge and Learning is central to Water for Women. It is a key priority of all partners and positions the Fund as an important contributor to global knowledge development and sharing in the water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) sector. Fund-generated evidence, centred on innovative and sustainable gender and socially inclusive WASH, supports partners to program for long-term impact. It also provides the basis to influence development sector-wide policy and practice globally, particularly around cross cutting themes of gender equality, disability and social inclusion and climate resilience.

Continual reflection, collaborative learning, knowledge creation and exchange are important elements of Water for Women which, combined with effective programming, support partners to lead practice globally and raise the bar in terms of gender and socially inclusive WASH research, analysis, design and program delivery.

In the first phase of Water for Women (2018 – 2022), our civil society organisation and research partners developed and shared a wealth of resources through their projects, you can view a selection of these resource highlights here.