13. November 2024    822

Krishnanagar Union in Satkhira district, Bangladesh, has always been surrounded by water, but water is no longer a friendly neighbor. Satkhira district, located in the southwest of the country, is close to the Bay of Bengal and hosts part of the Sundarbans, the largest mangrove forest in the world.

  2. September 2024    1476

As SIWI World Water Week 2024 kicks off in Stockholm this week, we are reminded of the profound importance of water and sanitation cooperation in fostering peace and security across the globe. This year's theme, "Bridging Borders: Water for a Peaceful and Sustainable Future," reminds us of the intricate interconnections between and across communities and nations and emphasizes the need for collaborative efforts to secure a better future for all. Ensuring that sanitation systems are robust and adaptable to climate challenges is not only essential for safeguarding public health but for promoting regional stability and sustainable development. The Climate Resilient Sanitation Coalition (CRSC) of more than 30 leading organizations that work at this intersection recognizes the significance of climate-resilient sanitation (CRS) in building a peaceful, secure, and sustainable future.

  11. June 2024    3702

In September 2021, Hurricane Ida dropped more than six inches of rain on New York City in a matter of hours. Roughly half of that rainfall, 3.15 inches, fell within the first hour—nearly twice the rate the city’s infrastructure was designed to handle. 

At 11am that day, I got a call from my daughter’s school in the outskirts of the NYC metropolitan area asking me to collect my daughter ASAP. The school basement was filling with water … fast. By the end of the day, the school was shuttered, and the surrounding community evacuated. Meanwhile, outside my front door in suburban New York, neighbours were piling the contents of their basements onto the sidewalk. ‘The neighbourhood’s shit is in my basement!’ one exclaimed. Social media was filled with discordant images of flooded streets and Teslas floating through them.

  7. May 2024    5169

Kiritimati Island is a unique place. Situated within the Line Islands group of the Republic of Kiribati, an island country spanning almost 3.5 million km2 of ocean, it isn’t easy to find on a map. The closest international airport (other than its own) is in Honolulu – more than 2,000 km away. The capital of its own country is even farther away. Despite being  the largest coral atoll in the world, as of 2020 only 7,369 people live there.

  24. January 2024    2096

Water is the condition for (a healthy) life, which is why access to clean tap water and sanitation has been included as one of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in the Agenda 2030, the international agreement for global development. In a global comparison, Germany is very well positioned, but we increasingly have to deal with issues such as water pollution and - due to the increasing impacts of climate change - water scarcity too. In reference to sanitation in Germany, the main question we have to ask ourselves is how we can use our tap water as economically as possible. Because of its outstanding quality in Germany it should end up in the Germans' stomachs rather than in their toilets.

  28. November 2023    2058

Despite the proven impact and interrelationship between sanitation and climate change, sanitation is still not part of the climate conversation. It must be, not only to ensure the resilience of the infrastructure, communities and the ecosystems which we depend on in the face of a global climate emergency, but also to harness effective and under-utilised greenhouse gas mitigation possibilities.