“Reporting on the progress made, the challenges that remain, and impact of COVID-19 on the WASH sector is crucial,” said Ambassador Mark Green, President, Director, and CEO of the Wilson Center and former USAID Administrator, during his opening remarks at a recent event hosted by the Wilson Center and Circle of Blue to discuss the WASH Within Reach project. 

“We need to devote our full attention to the relationship between water, climate, and security, increase understanding of the issue, and take urgent action,” said Carola van Rijnsoever, Director of Inclusive Green Growth at the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs, at a recent Hague roundtable on building a transatlantic coalition for climate action on water and security challenges in countries of risk.

With their blocky stamped metal heads and long arms, the India Mark II and Afridev hand water pumps are hardly aesthetically appealing. What matters is their design. That is, how well do they work?

Introduced in the 1980s, manufactured by the millions, and installed in communities across Africa and Asia, the two hand pumps are the most popular tools for lifting water to the surface from rural underground reserves. In that capacity, the two pumps occupy prominent space in the WASH sector’s long-running and formative debate over whether the global campaign is succeeding or slipping in the effort to attain universal access to clean water, sanitation, and hygiene. 

People devoted to financing water, sanitation and hygiene in developing nations worried for much of 2020. Utility customers stopped paying their water bills. Funders altered their priorities. Heads of state turned their attention to other virus-related emergencies.

But did COVID-19 affect funding enough to slow progress toward universal access to clean water, safe sanitation, and hygiene? And if it did, by how much?

Until 2016, the agrarian residents of east Kenya’s Kitui county had never encountered a water quality monitor like Mary Musenya. Wearing a bright blue company jersey and furnished with sample bottles and plastic trays, the young Kenyan is a water safety officer for FundiFix, a tiny rural water supply service company. She is one of 20 staff who manage 130 pumps, plus pipes and water tanks that serve 82,000 people across a 1,000 square-mile service area in Kitui and Kwale counties. 

In 2020, the world experienced the convergence of the global water and climate change crises, the COVID-19 pandemic, and economic recession. The compounded emergencies hit even well-prepared countries hard. For the more than 50 percent of the world’s population that relies on transboundary freshwater sources for their drinking water, the renewed urgency for access to water for sanitation raised additional challenges. Effectively responding to the crises demanded an elevated degree of communication and coordination between neighboring states precisely when coordination and collaboration processes encountered new barriers to effective transboundary engagement. As neighboring states instituted travel restrictions, water dialogues had to adapt through digital water diplomacy processes.

Water deprivation is increasingly recognized as a political and security problem. Tensions resulting from the growing imbalance between global water demand and supply can escalate into conflict. Efforts to solve water-related conflicts and promote water cooperation for peace, termed “water diplomacy” or “hydro-diplomacy,” continue to be male-dominated. Several recent events and related publications are contributing to bridging this persistent gender gap.

Jordan is facing a deepening, multi-faceted freshwater crisis. Climate change and population growth are exacerbating its extremely limited natural water availability and dependence on transboundary rivers and groundwater. Water-poor and functionally landlocked, Jordan serves as an archetype of a water-stressed nation.