USAID PREPAREs for Climate Resilience

At COP26, USAID launched and committed a whole-of-government approach, the President’s Emergency Plan for Adaptation and Resilience (PREPARE), to support more than half a billion people to adapt to and manage the impacts of climate change through locally-led development by 2030. COP 27 provides an important moment to reflect on the action USAID has taken to advance its COP26 commitment in its first year, including supporting the mobilization of $1 billion in climate-resilient water and sanitation services by 2030. 

Over the past year, USAID has worked with partner governments and service providers in local contexts to: 

• Unlock public climate finance. In the Philippines, USAID is supporting provincial governments to prepare water security plans and their ability to access finance to implement these plans.
• Enhance domestic public budget allocations.  We helped Cape Town, South Africa realize a partnership with The Nature Conservancy to create the Cape Town Water Fund, a co-funded effort to raise over $8 million to remove alien invasive plants that contribute to the depletion of the city’s water supply.  
• Mobilize commercial finance and private sector investments. In another city in South Africa, Mbombela, we helped renegotiate the terms of an existing public-private partnership to significantly increase private sector investment for the expansion of water and sanitation services. The private sector concessionaire committed to invest approximately $15 million over five years to expand services, reduce water losses, and upgrade existing infrastructure to ensure long-term resilience. In Kenya, the USAID Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene Finance (WASH-FIN) activity mobilized over $600,000 for climate change adaptation in 2021 by helping sanitation service providers access capital to develop fecal sludge treatment infrastructure - reducing sanitation-related emissions and creating biomass fuels in the process.

This week at COP27, USAID is launching its global flagship water finance and governance program, the Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene Finance 2 Activity (WASH-FIN 2), which will mobilize $375 million by 2027 for climate-resilient water and sanitation services and strengthen at least 165 sector institutions and service providers. The program will work in collaboration with government, development partners, financial institutions, service providers, and local stakeholders to close financing gaps and improve governance structures. This will enable targeted countries to access reliable sources of capital for sustainable, climate-resilient water and sanitation infrastructure.

From the drought in the horn of Africa to the floods that left one-third of Pakistan underwater, climate change is both slowing and undoing progress made on increasing access to water and sanitation around the world. That is why climate solutions are water solutions. USAID continues to work with partner governments and local actors to set the global trajectory toward a vision of a resilient, prosperous, and equitable world with net-zero greenhouse gas emissions. By pairing its investments in climate-resilient water and sanitation infrastructure and services with its commitments to mobilizing climate-resilient finance, USAID will - over time - contribute to a far greater number of people with increased access to water and sanitation than the direct provision of climate-resilient services alone. 

By: Ella Lazarte, Sr. Water and Sanitation Advisor, and Natalie Gill, Program Management Specialist, in USAID’s RFS Center for Water Security, Sanitation and Hygiene.

More information on USAID’s approach to Climate and Water can be found in the Climate-Resilient, Low Emissions Water Security and Sanitation Technical Brief and the 2022-2027 Global Water Strategy.