Abstract
Access to water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH)—including drainage-services—is essential for public health and socio-economic development, but access remains inadequate and inequitable in low- to middle-income countries such as South Africa. In South Africa, rural areas and small towns generally depend on a limited and climate-sensitive economic base (e.g., farming), and they have a limited capacity and are located in areas where transport challenges can increase WASH access risks. Climate change shifts hydrological cycles, which can worsen WASH access and increase susceptibility to the interlinked impacts of droughts and flooding in already vulnerable regions. We adopted a transdisciplinary approach to explore the needs, barriers, and vulnerabilities with respect to WASH in rural areas and small towns in South Africa—using two case studies to explore climate risk and vulnerability assessment (CRVA) in one rural village in the northern Limpopo province and a small town in the Western Cape province. This holistic approach considered natural (environment and climate) and socio-economic (economic, social, governance, and political) factors and how they interplay in hampering access to WASH. Extreme weather events characterized by frequent and intense droughts or floods aggravate surface and groundwater availability and damage water infrastructure while threatening agriculture-dependent livelihoods. The lack of reliable transport infrastructure increases risks posed by flooding as roads to vital supplies are prone to damage. High inequality linked to rising unemployment and the Apartheid legacy of a segregated service delivery system result in inequitable access to WASH services. The intertwined ways in which natural elements and historical, social, economic, governance, and policy aspects are changing in South Africa increase WASH vulnerability in rural areas and small towns.
Highlights
Access to water, sanitation, and hygiene services (WASH) is essential for public health and socio-economic development
Since the 1970s, two-thirds of the South African population have moved to larger cities to seek economic opportunities resulting in the depopulation of small towns and rural areas [3], further reducing the economic prospects of these areas
In South Africa, standard Climate Risk and Vulnerability Assessments (CRVAs) are difficult to complete for varying reasons, i.e., limitations of available local data, the inclusion of irrelevant fields, or the reality that most assessment tools undervalue or neglect local and context-specific areas of concern
Summary
Sanitation, and hygiene services (WASH) is essential for public health and socio-economic development. In low- to middle-income countries such as South Africa, access to WASH remains inadequate and inequitable, in remote rural areas and small towns where skills, capacity, and funding shortages hamper efforts to ensure equitable access. Small towns and rural areas are vulnerable areas that require a research focus to understand the potential impacts of environmental and socio-economic factors on WASH. A strong focus on drainage, as is needed in many southern African informal housing areas and water sites (that are used as part of local healing practices), is often absent
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