scholarly journals Rapid Climate Adaption Assessment (RCAA) of water supply and sanitation services in two coastal urban poor communities in Accra, Ghana

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 1645-1660 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nikolaus Clemenz ◽  
Richard Boakye ◽  
Alison Parker

Abstract This study assessed the impact of different hydrological scenarios on existing vulnerabilities of water and sanitation services in Chorkor and Shiabu, two coastal urban poor communities in Accra, Ghana. The hydrological scenarios were developed from the literature on climate change projections. This paper recommends adaptations for community members, service providers, and the municipality based on the impact assessment. Chorkor and Shiabu are vulnerable to an increase in rainfall because of the lack of adequate solid waste management and hydrological sound drains. Shiabu's topography and the indiscriminate sand mining along its beach make it vulnerable to an increase in sea level. Looking beyond Chorkor and Shiabu's community boundaries, the urban water utility which supplies water vendors in both communities may be severely impacted by a decrease in rainfall, which would lead to water scarcity and a shortage in hydroelectricity. Regardless of which climate change scenario emerges, many of the recommended adaptations are good water management practice, for example, increasing the number of household connections and reducing non-revenue water. Putting climate change high on the agenda has the potential to generate additional funding to help address Chorkor and Shiabu's water and sanitation problems, and climate-proof services for the future. However, the study method does not address the governance of these adaptations.

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Guy Howard ◽  
Anisha Nijhawan ◽  
Adrian Flint ◽  
Manish Baidya ◽  
Maria Pregnolato ◽  
...  

AbstractClimate change presents a major threat to water and sanitation services. There is an urgent need to understand and improve resilience, particularly in rural communities and small towns in low- and middle-income countries that already struggle to provide universal access to services and face increasing threats from climate change. To date, there is a lack of a simple framework to assess the resilience of water and sanitation services which hinders the development of strategies to improve services. An interdisciplinary team of engineers and environmental and social scientists were brought together to investigate the development of a resilience measurement framework for use in low- and middle-income countries. Six domains of interest were identified based on a literature review, expert opinion, and limited field assessments in two countries. A scoring system using a Likert scale is proposed to assess the resilience of services and allow analysis at local and national levels to support improvements in individual supplies, identifying systematic faults, and support prioritisation for action. This is a simple, multi-dimensional framework for assessing the resilience of rural and small-town water and sanitation services in LMICs. The framework is being further tested in Nepal and Ethiopia and future results will be reported on its application.


2010 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 2-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guy Howard ◽  
Katrina Charles ◽  
Kathy Pond ◽  
Anca Brookshaw ◽  
Rifat Hossain ◽  
...  

Drinking-water supply and sanitation services are essential for human health, but their technologies and management systems are potentially vulnerable to climate change. An assessment was made of the resilience of water supply and sanitation systems against forecast climate changes by 2020 and 2030. The results showed very few technologies are resilient to climate change and the sustainability of the current progress towards the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) may be significantly undermined. Management approaches are more important than technology in building resilience for water supply, but the reverse is true for sanitation. Whilst climate change represents a significant threat to sustainable drinking-water and sanitation services, through no-regrets actions and using opportunities to increase service quality, climate change may be a driver for improvements that have been insufficiently delivered to date.


Author(s):  
Dr. Basanta Kalita

The SDGs agenda is the outcome of a series of international conferences on the issue of environmental sustainability. A principle of common and differentiated responsibility was endorsed by the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development (1992) and the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, Rio+20 (2012). The political commitments from the world leaders were confirmed during the 3rd International Conference on Financing for Development held in Addis Ababa in July 2015 for a common policy on sustainable development. The goals are broad based and interdependent. Finally the Paris Declaration on Climate Change (2016) paved the way for the adoption of a comprehensive list of goals to be achieved by 2030. Each of the 17 sustainable development goals has a list of targets which are measured with indicators and are interdependent. The present study will be confined to the 6th goal which is ensuring “Clean water and Sanitation” in the Indian context. KEYWORDS: SDGs agenda, Climate Change, employment, sanitation services


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 45-58
Author(s):  
Habtamu Wondimu

This study aimed to examine the impact of poor solid waste management on student’s health care at Gondar University of “Tewodros” campus. The study used a mixed-method approach. To recruit sample respondents', both probability and non-probability sampling methods have been employed. In the meantime, the study revealed the sources of solid waste, it is understood that the poorly collected and managed solid wastes of the study area due to the lack of necessary materials and facilities of waste collection, lack of laborers engaged in street sweeping and daily removal of solid waste is now becoming the major causes of environmental problems such as surface and groundwater pollution problems. Besides, the student’s health office personnel in the interview approached the general health status of the students on the campus during this year. Accordingly, dysentery, common cold, and typhoid are the most frequently appear disease on the Tewodros campus. Therefore, there should be a “students committee “at the campus level to control illegal dumping and to develop practice and habits of poor waste handling and disposal in the community, and there must be apparent regulation and policy frameworks that prohibit poor waste management.


2014 ◽  
Vol 42 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 75-102 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emma Porio

Climate change and flooding in Asian cities pose great challenges to the environmental and human security of the population and their governance systems. This paper examines the intersections of ecological-environmental and social vulnerability and the adaptive responses of urban poor communities and commercial-industrial establishments in Metro Manila to floods and other climate change-related effects, such as storm surges and sea-level rise (SLR). These weaken the communities’ ecological-environmental systems, threaten the well-being and security of the people and strain the resources of city governments. Disaggregating the ecological-environment vulnerabilities of a city/community according to specific places/spaces (or place-based vulnerabilities) that lead also to variable patterns among different groups (e.g., gender, income group, sector) of adaptive responses to flooding. Drawing a systematic sample of urban poor households and industrial-commercial establishments along the Pasig-Marikina River Basin of Metro Manila, this study utilised household surveys, key informant interviews, focus group discussions (FGD) and secondary data sources, in analysing the sources of their vulnerability and adaptive responses. Existing studies generally focus on the vulnerability and adaptation of urban-rural populations and do not highlight the interaction of place-based vulnerabilities with sector-specific vulnerabilities that reconfigure flood impacts and responses among the urban poor communities and commercial-industrial establishments during and after floods. In particular, poor and female-headed households residing in highly degraded environments or places/spaces within and across urban poor communities suffered higher damages and losses compared to better-off households and establishments. The interaction of these drivers of vulnerability further heightens and compromises the environmental and human security needs of poor people, their communities and those in the private sector that local/national government agencies need to respond.


2011 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-33
Author(s):  
Xuan Hoang Nguyen ◽  
Hoang Viet Le

Municipal solid waste (MSW) in Vietnam has been increasing quickly and became one of the most considered environmental problems in Mekong Delta (MD) region covering 13 provinces and municipalities in the south of Vietnam. With a considerably large amount of MSW, the region produces about 5% of the total amount of MSW of the country. The collection rate of solid waste is about quite high (65 - 72%) in the cities and rather low (about 40 - 55%) in the rural areas, with a high content in organic matter (about 60 - 85%). The climate of MD can be characterized as tropical and monsoonal with a high rate of humidity and a strong impact of flooding. Like other regions too, the MSW collection and treatment system is still underdeveloped and rudimentary, with disposal sites being the sole dumping method of the unsorted MSW remaining untreated by any mechanical and biological pre-treatment steps. Within this paper, the current treatment, management and operation of MSW systems are introduced, as well as the identification of advantages and dis-advantages, environmental impacts, potential risks of the MSW system within the impact of global climate change. The situation of MSW treatment and management is correlated with the climate change impact and the integrated solid waste management is introduced as a new approach for adapting the environmental protection awareness by considering the climate change for the long-term sustainable development orientation. Sự gia tăng chất thải rắn ở các đô thị Việt Nam ngày càng nhanh và chất thải rắn đang là một trong những vấn đề môi trường được quan tâm hàng đầu. Đồng bằng Sông Cửu Long (ĐBSCL) nơi có đến 13 tỉnh và thành phố nằm ở phía Nam Việt Nam. Với lượng chất thải không nhỏ, chiếm khoảng 5 % tổng lượng chất thải rắn sinh hoạt của quốc gia. Tỷ lệ thu gom chất thải rắn thấp, chiếm khoảng 65 - 72 % ở thành thị, tỷ lệ này ở nông thôn thấp 40 - 55%, chất thải có hàm lượng hữu cơ cao chiếm khoảng 60 - 85%. Khí hậu nhiệt đới gió mùa với độ ẩm không khí cao và chịu ảnh hưởng lớn của lũ lụt hàng năm. Cũng như các khu vực khác, hệ thống thu gom và xử lý rác thải ở khu vực ĐBSCL còn rất thô sơ và lạc hậu, bãi rác là nơi duy nhất tiếp nhận trực tiếp hổn hợp rác thải không phân loại và qua bất kỳ công đoạn tiền xử lý nào. Trong phạm vi bài viết này, chúng tôi giới thiệu hoạt động vận hành hệ thống quản lý và xử lý rác đô thị trong khu vực đồng thời phân tích các thuận lợi và bất lợi, cũng như các tác động môi trường, những rủi ro tiềm ẩn trong điều kiện ảnh hưởng của biến đổi khí hậu toàn cầu - khu vực ĐBSCL là nơi chịu ảnh hưởng nặng nề nhất. Tình hình quản lý và xử lý rác được cân nhắc trong điều kiện tác động của biến đổi khí hậu, đồng thời quản lý tổng hợp rác thải cũng được đềxuất như một các tiếp cận mới nhằm đáp ứng nhiệm vụ bảo vệ môi trường trong điều kiện biến đổi khí hậu theo định hướng phát triển bền vững lâu dài.


Author(s):  
Ifie-emi Francis Oseke ◽  
Geophery Kwame Anornu ◽  
Kwaku Amaning Adjei ◽  
Martin Obada Eduvie

Abstract. The strategies and actions in the management of African River Basins in a warming climate environment have been studied. Using the Gurara Reservoir Catchment in North-West Nigeria as a case study, summations were proposed using hypothetical climate scenarios considering the Global Climate Models prediction and linear trend of the data. Four (4) proposed scenarios of temperature increase (1 % and 2 %) coupled with a decrease in precipitation of (−5 % and −10 %) were combined and applied for the study area. The Water Evaluation and Planning Tool was used to model and evaluates the impact of the earth's rising temperature and declining rainfall on the hydrology and availability of water by investigating its resilience to climate change. Modelling results indicate a reduction in available water within the study area from 4.3 % to 3.5 % compared to the baseline with no climate change scenario, revealing the current water management strategy as not sustainable, uncoordinated, and resulting in overexploitation. The findings could assist in managing future water resources in the catchment by accentuating the need to put in place appropriate adaptation measures to foster resilience to climate change. Practically, it is pertinent to shape more effective policies and regulations within catchments for effective water resources management in reducing water shortage as well as achieving downstream water needs and power benefit in thefuture, while also allowing flexibility in the operation of a reservoir with the ultimate goal of adapting to climate change.


Author(s):  
Heman Das Lohano ◽  
Fateh Muhammad Marri

Water resources in Sindh province of Pakistan are under significant pressure due to increasing and conflicting water demand from municipalities for domestic users, agriculture and industries, and requirements of environmental flows. Population growth and climate change are likely to pose serious challenges to households and economic sectors that depend on water. This study estimates the present water demand from municipalities, agriculture and industries, and its future projections by the year 2050 in Sindh. The study also evaluates the impact of climate change on sectoral water demand and assesses the water requirements for the environmental flows. The results show that presently the total water demand for these sectors in Sindh is 44.06 Million Acre Feet (MAF). Agriculture is the largest consumer of water, accounting for 95.24 percent of the total water demand. Municipal water demand accounts for 2.61 percent while industrial water demand accounts for 1.88 percent. The demand for water in these sectors is expected to rise by 10 percent from 2018 to 2050. Moreover, depending on climate change scenario, the total water demand in these three sectors is likely to rise by 16 to 25 percent from 2018 to 2050. In additions, water requirements for the environmental flows have been indicated as 10 MAF in the National Water Accord of 1991. The findings of this study call for policy measures and strategies for management of water resources in Sindh.


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