Climate resilience of small-town water utilities in Eastern Ethiopia

Abstract

Climate change threatens the safety of water supplies globally, but small water supplies in rapidly growing and urbanizing towns in low- and middle-income countries are especially at risk. Despite the efforts of the Government of Ethiopia, research shows that that small-town water utilities in Ethiopia are poorly equipped to prioritize developing and maintaining climate-resilient water services. We applied the How tough is WASH framework for climate resilient water supplies to ten town water utilities in Eastern Ethiopia to identify their strengths and weaknesses in preparing for climate change. We found reports of weak institutional support from service authorities and exclusion of climate risk management from trainings, which cascades down to service providers in the form of lack of emergency response, inadequate staffing and financial mismanagement. This is consistent with previous studies on sustainability of town water utilities, and highlights the applicability of this tool into existing monitoring frameworks that have been proposed for town water utilities in Ethiopia. We also modified the How tough is WASH framework to capture these findings and better reflect the complexity of a utility-managed piped water supply.