Climate resilience pathways: Water security and WASH in Asia Pacific

Address:

Bangkok, Thailand and Suva, Fiji
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Category:

Water for Women

Description:

Water for Women and International WaterCentre are excited to team up to deliver a Water for Women learning event over 29 April – 1 May, 2025 highlighting lessons for climate-resilient, inclusive water and WASH.

29 April – 1 May, 2025

Bangkok, Thailand & Suva, Fiji

Water security, WASH, and climate resilience are deeply interconnected, particularly in the Asia-Pacific region, where climate challenges such as rising sea levels, extreme weather events, and water scarcity are becoming more severe. This conference will explore how ensuring inclusive access to safe water, sanitation, hygiene, and effective water management is not only critical for health but also foundational to building resilience for all in the face of a changing climate.

Working collaboratively with partners across the region, Water for Women and IWC are hosting this conference as an opportunity for professional, practitioners and Development Partners working in water, WASH, climate and GEDSI, to share best practices and integrated approaches as a fundamental requirement of climate resilience.

Conference theme

Sustainable Development Goal 6 is a global commitment to ensure safe water and sanitation for all, by achieving the sustainable management of water resources, water supplies, waste, water ecosystems, water-related hazards and, enabling access by all to safe drinking water, sanitation and hygiene. Achieving SDG6 is an ambitious goal, further challenged by climate change, and a commitment to effective policy and practice is a foundational requirement.

But water management and WASH are also intimately linked with actions to improve other development needs, such as economic development and livelihoods, health, education, GEDSI, energy, and food security. And, Climate change, shocks and disasters are seriously impeding development progress – they directly affect water resources, WASH services and water ecosystems as well as hampering progress in health, education, energy, social inclusion, and food security goals because of their links and dependencies on water management and WASH.

Adapting to climate change, ensuring net progress on these linked development goals, requires us to take into account these cross-sectoral links, and to leverage synergies where they can be encouraged, through policy and program design.

About the conference

The Australian Government has contributed significantly to developing best practice in water security, WASH, climate and GEDSI. The Water for Women Fund in particular has generated many important lessons in strengthening the climate resilience and inclusiveness of water security & WASH. Over the program’s lifecycle,  the centrality of water security and inclusive WASH in climate adaptation and resilience has been demonstrated.

This event will be a timely opportunity to share lessons and insights on key challenges and enablers with other actors looking to strengthen climate resilience through the lens of water management and WASH.

The conference is supported by flagship DFAT Programs, in particular Water for Women Fund, Australian Water Partnership, and Mekong Australia Partnership amongst others, and is a key opportunity for the lessons learned from these programs to be shared and discussed with broader sector actors.

Objective of the conference: Sharing practice to strengthen practice

The conference provides an opportunity for professionals and practitioners to advance knowledge, policy & practice, and sharing these with Development Partners to support progressing development goals and climate resilience, for which water is central.

Participants

Professionals and practitioners, primarily from in the Asia Pacific region, working on WASH, water management, climate adaptation, disaster management, and the connections of water with health, education, energy, food and social inclusion. This includes participants from government, utilities, private sector, multilaterals and civil society, academia and consultants/advisors.

Delegates will select either Bangkok, Thailand, or Suva, Fiji to participate in the conference. The daily plenary sessions will be streamed online for participants that cannot join in-person.

Format

The 2025 conference will take place in two sub-regional hubs: Bangkok, Thailand and Suva, Fiji. A common (cross-hub) plenary program will unite the two hubs to discuss critical, universal issues. This will be complemented by an in-person program of sessions in each hub addressing issues and opportunities relevant to the sub-region.

Plenary sessions will be jointly delivered by both hubs simultaneously. There will be online streaming of plenaries for online delegates. All other sessions will be in-person only. These sessions will be locally-delivered in-person, with multiple sessions delivered in parallel. There will be 2-5 streams of sessions, depending on interest and capacity.