Emergencies can arise from a range of scenarios and can be either acute and time-limited or chronic and protracted in nature. The scenarios leading to emergencies can be broadly categorised as follows:
Emergencies Triggered by Natural or Technological Hazards: Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, landslides, floods, storms, droughts, temperature extremes and disease epidemics/ pandemics (e.g. Cholera, Ebola or Covid-19) are natural hazards that can cause humanitarian disasters claiming many lives and causing economic losses and environmental and infrastructure damage. However, humanitarian disasters only occur if a hazard strikes where populations are vulnerable to the specific hazard. The growing world population, continuing global urbanisation and changes in land use can further increase vulnerability to natural and technological hazards, such as dam failures and chemical or nuclear accidents. Such emergencies often result in a deterioration of environmental health conditions, particularly regarding access to basic WASH services. Infrastructure such as schools, roads, hospitals and water and sanitation facilities are often directly affected, reducing access to clean water, sanitation and relevant hygiene practices like handwashing, which increases the risk of water- and sanitation-related diseases.
Conflicts: This refers to societally caused emergency situations such as political conflicts, armed confrontations, and civil wars. Many displaced people (internally displaced and/or refugees) have to be housed in camps, temporary shelters, or host communities, where access to clean water, sanitation, and hygiene items needs to be guaranteed at very short notice and often must be maintained over long periods. Most displaced persons are usually absorbed by host communities. This can overburden the existing water supply (and sanitation) infrastructure, making it difficult to identify and quantify actual needs and potentially requiring upgrades to existing infrastructure. Due to conflict dynamics and because population displacement can occur (and dynamically change) over a longer period of time, it is often difficult to plan how long shelters and corresponding water supply infrastructure must remain in place. This required operational time can vary from a few weeks or months to several years or even decades. The majority of refugee camps are becoming increasingly longer term (10 years or more) that often develop into continuous urban settlements. Hence, all technologies implemented in such settings should be viewed through the lens of long-term sustainability. An adequate water supply source is generally the main criteria for siting a camp or displaced population. However, refugee camps are often constructed in water scarce environments, so it is important to make the decision to move people to water or bring water to people early on in the response. In many situations, settlement solutions are considered a short -term intervention, as it is politically undesirable to consider more permanent settlement options. Local authorities might oppose activities that are seen to make the water or sanitation infrastructure in a temporary settlement more permanent or better developed for fear of having long-term responsibility for the displaced population. This is further complicated if the conditions in the camp might become better than those in local settlements, which can create tension between the local and refugee populations. Such cases should be seen as opportunities to improve water supply services for both host and refugee communities.
Fragile States and Protracted Crises: Fragile states and countries in protracted crises are becoming increasingly more common. States can be considered fragile when they are unwilling or unable to meet their basic functions. For the affected population, safety may be at risk if basic social services are not provided or are only poorly functioning. Weak government structures or lack of government responsibility for ensuring basic services can increase poverty, inequality and social distrust and can potentially develop into a humanitarian emergency. Protracted crisis situations are characterised by recurrent disasters and/or conflicts, prolonged food crises, deterioration of the health status of people, breakdown of livelihoods and insufficient institutional capacity to react to crises. In these environments, a significant proportion of the population is acutely vulnerable to premature death or illness. The provision of basic water supply services is often neglected, and external support using conventional government channels can lead to highly unsatisfactory experiences. Under these conditions, it may be necessary to explore complementary and alternative means of service provision, basing it mainly on non- and sub-state actors at a relatively decentralised level. Water supply technologies should be selected that can withstand theft (as far as possible) and have the fewest external inputs as possible (e.g. fuel or chemicals).
(High-) Risk Countries Continuously Affected by Disasters and Climate Change: Climate change and the increased likelihood of associated natural hazards is an enormous challenge for many countries. The risk that natural events become a disaster is largely determined by the vulnerability of the society, the susceptibility of its ecological or socio-economic systems and the impact of climate change both on occasional extreme events (e.g. heavy rains causing floods or landslides) and on gradual climatic changes (e.g. temporal shift of the rainy seasons). Climate change also exacerbates problematic situations in countries that are already suffering from disasters. In addition to the immediate emergency response that may be required, it also needs a stronger focus from development actors to consider adequate preventative and disaster risk reduction (see X.10) measures. Existing water supply infrastructure may need adaptations or more appropriate and robust water supply systems may need to be introduced to increase resilience and help communities cope with climate-induced recurrent extreme weather events (e.g. raised water points for flood-prone areas or bigger storage tanks to withstand longer dry seasons). It may also include preparedness measures such as capacity development, equipment stockpiling and surge roster development. In addition, water supply systems may need to be prepared to serve climate change refugees.
Disasters can often be a mix of several categories (e.g. fragile or conflict-affected states hit by a natural disaster), which makes response targeting more difficult (e.g. targeting only those affected by the natural disaster vs. those affected by more chronic conditions). In addition, disaster and crisis scenarios can be further differentiated into sudden onset disasters (e.g. earthquakes or conflicts) and slow-onset disasters (e.g. droughts that may lead to a prolonged food crisis or fragile contexts that lead to the deterioration of services over time). Depending on the type of crisis, population and infrastructure may also be affected very differently. While some disasters may lead to massive population movements with implications for strong public health measures, others may only affect the infrastructure, which would shift the response focus to repairs and respective improvements.
