The Global WASH Cluster describes disasters as events where important losses and damage are inflicted upon communities and individuals, possibly including loss of life and livelihood assets, leaving the affected communities unable to function normally without outside assistance. Disasters or humanitarian emergencies can take different forms. Each emergency situation, depending on the country context, its scope and causes is unique and has a great impact on people, the environment and infrastructure. Despite this heterogeneity, the following subdivision of various types of crises can be used to provide a rough categorisation:
Disasters Triggered by Natural or Technological Hazards: Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, landslides, floods, storms, droughts and temperature extremes 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. Due to climate change and its far-reaching impact, humanitarian assistance has to increasingly deal with extreme weather events and their consequences. The growing world population, continuing global urbanisation and changes in land use, further increase the vulnerability to natural and technological hazards such as dam breaks, chemical or nuclear contamination. Such disasters often result in a deterioration of environmental health conditions, particularly in terms of access to basic sanitation services. Infrastructure such as schools, roads, hospitals, as well as sanitary facilities and washroom facilities are often directly affected, resulting in access to sanitation and the practice of relevant hygiene behaviour like handwashing no longer being assured. Thus, the risk of water and sanitation related diseases increases.
Conflicts: This includes societally-caused emergency situations such as political conflicts, armed confrontations and civil wars. Many displaced people (internally displaced people and/or refugees) have to be housed in camps, temporary shelters or host communities, where access to adequate sanitation and hygiene items needs to be guaranteed at very short notice and often must be maintained over longer periods. Most displaced persons are usually absorbed by host communities. This can overburden the existing sanitation infrastructure making it difficult to identify and quantify actual needs. Because of conflict dynamics, it is often difficult to plan how long shelters and corresponding sanitation infrastructure must remain in place. This can vary from a few weeks or months to several years or even decades. In addition, refugee camps are often constructed in places with an already tense sanitation situation. In refugee situations, where a displaced population is initially housed in temporary shelters or in a camp it is usually not politically desired that any move towards permanent settlement is made. Local decision makers might oppose activities that are seen to make the settlement more permanent or better developed for fear of not being able to move the refugee population back to where they initially came from. This is further complicated if the conditions in the camp prove to become better than those in local settlements. Tensions can arise between the local and refugee populations. Such cases should be seen as opportunities to improve sanitation services for both host and refugee communities.
Fragile States and Protracted Crises: A phenomenon that is increasingly common is the issue of fragile states and countries in protracted crises. States can be considered fragile if the state is unwilling or unable to meet its basic functions. For the affected population, their safety may be at risk as basic social services are not, or are only poorly, provided. Weak government structures or lack of government responsibility for ensuring basic services can lead to increased poverty, inequality, 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 mortality, morbidity and disruption of livelihoods over a prolonged period of time. The provision of basic sanitation 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.
(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 by 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 high-risk countries that are already suffering from disasters. Existing sanitation infrastructure may need adaptations or the introduction of more appropriate and robust sanitation systems to increase resilience and help communities cope with climate-induced recurrent extreme weather events (e.g. raised sanitation solutions for flood-prone areas). In addition, sanitation systems may need to be prepared to serve climate change refugees.
