Reducing Vulnerability Through Climate Resilient Water and Wastewater Interventions in Greater Accra (ReVIGA)

project summary

The project’s main objective is to reduce water and wastewater related vulnerability experienced by marginalised urban communities living in informal settlements in the Greater Accra Metropolitan Area of Ghana. Residents here face multiple and complex combinations of climatic and societal challenges, including water supply scarcity, high costs, drain surges, fires, flooding, heat, high risk of damage to poor quality housing, displacement, water quality uncertainty, and health risks from dilapidated infrastructure. In response, a diverse range of public and private actors with highly varied resource capabilities actively engage in planning and constructing water system improvements. Many profess a commitment to inclusive development, but their actions are invariably shaped by competing interests and logics. For example, it is recognised that water system interventions often lead to uneven outcomes, often reproduce vulnerability, risk triggering land value capture, and are prone to politicization, including unjust displacement. Also, gendered vulnerability related to water and wastewater systems continues to increase despite inclusion in numerous policy frameworks of African governments. The result is that water and wastewater interventions intended to lift developmental standards often increase urban vulnerability and do not support local processes of adaptation that marginalised communities are dependent upon. It is on this basis the project investigates the implementation of climate resilient water and wastewater system infrastructure developing across the area, the impacts on marginalised urban communities, and how related vulnerabilities can be most effectively mitigated to support local adaptation. The project focuses on four substantial water and wastewater interventions and examines four developmental dimensions of each with qualitative and quantitative methods. The dimensions cover the politics of service provision, the process of implementing policy objectives, local practices and contestation over water and wastewater as related to the interventions, and finally, how best to support vulnerable groups and inclusive governance frameworks. The project aims to design empirically based policy perspectives and context specific solutions for key stakeholders, including planners and implementers, so as to reduce water and wastewater related vulnerability and support local adaptation across the area.