Climate resilience is not optional: what people in fragile, urban settings should expect from WASH

Climate change is intensifying water insecurity in fragile urban settings, where ageing infrastructure, rapid urbanization, and inequality already strain access to essential services. In Peshawar, Pakistan, a city hosting generations of Afghan refugees and facing growing water scarcity, climate pressures have reduced river flow, damaged infrastructure for water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH), and increased waterborne disease. These impacts fall most heavily on refugees, informal settlement residents, and other marginalized communities with limited access to safe and reliable water and sanitation services.

In this post, part of our new series “Delivering for people in an evolving humanitarian landscape”, Sundus Tehreem Shahzad Khattak draws on qualitative research with government officials, residents and humanitarian practitioners in Pakistan to argue that effective, climate-resilient WASH projects do more than deliver services; they safeguard a spectrum of human rights, including dignity, safety from violence, and economic opportunity. She contends that meeting legitimate community expectations requires moving beyond siloed, short-term interventions toward formalized, multi-stakeholder collaboration that places local knowledge, gender responsiveness, and long-term sustainability at the centre of humanitarian action in an era of climate uncertainty and urban fragility.