Disaster Risk Reduction in WASH: Towards Resilience and Adaptive Management in the Water Sector

Water is key in tackling natural disasters and climate change, because it’s the medium through which most of their impacts are felt. Water management and development strategies have a pivotal role in reducing vulnerability of people and assets to natural hazards. Seen its extensiveness, we propose to unravel the topic from the viewpoint of disaster risk reduction (DRR) in WASH: inadequate WASH services can cause disasters, while disasters can further degrade WASH services, both resulting in increased risk. Hence, the key question of “How to best implement DRR principles in the WASH sector to strengthen resilience to natural disasters in a multi-hazard approach?” will drive this year’s AGUASAN workshop.

Based on thematic inputs, topic-specific cases and the broad expertise gathered by the participants, the 5-day cumulative knowledge generation process aims at preparing the practitioners community to respond effectively to the post-2015 interlinked water and disaster risk reduction challenges. The participants will share experiences and develop entry points regarding the workshop topic, and leave the event with practical measures to apply back home as well as with a strengthened professional network across the different communities. In particular, the AGUASAN Community of practice pools this year its expertise with the Swiss NGO DRR Platform.