Video summary
This episode of "Make Change Happen" shifts the focus from rural agriculture to the often-overlooked reality of urban drought, highlighting how water scarcity disproportionately affects city residents in informal settlements. Host Dina Najani introduces experts from Jordan and Zambia who reveal that while global attention frequently centers on crop failures, millions of urban dwellers face severe water shortages due to climate shocks like El Niño or chronic hydrological deficits. In Zambia's 2024 drought, for instance, the impact was most devastating in areas like Mishepo, where over 80% of residents lost access to reliable water because boreholes failed due to power outages and declining water tables. Consequently, vulnerable populations were forced to walk up to five kilometers daily to fetch water, often crossing dangerous infrastructure or relying on unsafe drainage systems, which placed immense physical strain on young people and women who bear the primary burden of collection.
The conversation further illustrates how drought reshapes intimate family dynamics and social safety within these communities, exacerbating gender-based violence and limiting essential hygiene practices. In Mishepo, extended water collection times led to misunderstandings between spouses, while young girls faced harassment and insults during their journeys. Similarly, in Jordan's Mafraq city, chronic water scarcity forces residents of low-income neighborhoods like Dahiyat al-Malik Abdullah to rely on weekly rationing, leaving many unable to fill storage tanks before supply cuts occur. The study revealed a stark disparity where refugee households possessed significantly less water storage capacity than local nationals, compounding their vulnerability. Furthermore, political conditions and social marginalization amplify these hardships; in Jordan, refugees often lack the awareness or empowerment to formally complain about service failures, while in Zambia, residents initially felt ignored by authorities until the research process helped them organize and demand accountability through community manifestos and council meetings.
Ultimately, the experts argue that responding to urban drought requires a fundamental shift from fragmented, emergency-driven reactions to integrated, long-term adaptation strategies embedded in urban planning and policy. They emphasize that informal settlements are often already in a state of water crisis regardless of seasonal droughts, meaning that new climate shocks simply push these communities into deeper emergencies without adequate preparedness. The proposed solution involves hardwiring drought resilience into city development plans, ensuring that investments prioritize the needs of marginalized groups rather than treating displacement and water scarcity as separate issues. By centering community voices and fostering collaboration between residents, utility providers, and city governments, urban areas can move toward proactive planning that builds sustainable futures. This approach not only addresses immediate survival needs but also empowers communities to hold leaders accountable, ensuring that the unique challenges of drought in diverse neighborhoods are met with inclusive and equitable governance.
Read the full video transcript
You are listening to make change [music]
happen, the podcast from IIED that
offers insights on issues affecting the
path towards a fairer, more sustainable
world.
>> Hello and welcome to this new episode of
IIED's Make Change Happen. My name is
Dina Najani. I'm a senior researcher at
IIED, and in this episode, we're going
to be looking at drought in cities.
Now, the World Health Organization
estimates that up to 55 million people
are affected by drought each year. Up to
40% of the world's population are
experiencing water shortages due to
drought.
We often hear about drought's impacts on
crops, food security, and the attention
is usually on farmers and farming
communities that depend on rainfall,
mostly in rural areas.
We don't tend to talk as much about
drought in cities, but actually, our
world is increasingly an urban world.
Cities today are home to the majority of
the world's population.
So, how do city residents experience
drought?
And how do these everyday urban
experiences lead to new understandings
of drought and how we adapt to it?
We're joined by experts from Jordan and
Zambia to answer those questions.
Welcome to Aya Hammad from UN-Habitat in
Jordan, Gilbert Siam from the University
of Zambia, and Melanie Chewa from the
People's Process for Housing and Poverty
in Zambia, the SDI affiliate. Welcome.
Um so, Gilbert, I think I'll start off
with you. Uh the 2024 El Nino drought in
Zambia was the worst the country
experienced in over four decades.
Immense devastation was recorded. Maize,
livestock, farmer livelihoods destroyed.
Uh what was perhaps less documented, and
tends to be generally the case when
talking about drought, is the impact on
urban areas, which you, alongside
Melanie, have examined, in particular in
informal settlements. Can you please
tell us more about that?
>> Thank you so much, Dinah. You are right.
When you look at the statistics, you
look at the evidence,
there is a lot of analysis of the impact
of drought. However, what is and what
has been the tendance
is that
areas that are home
to a much concentrated number of people
in terms of population,
cities, and in these cities, informal
settlements, these areas tend to be
forgotten in bringing out the impact of
a phenomenon like the 2024 drought on
Zambia. What we did is to study the
impacts of drought in one of the
fastest-growing communities in Lusaka,
called Mishepo, an informal settlement
home to over 5,000 residents, with a lot
of them being young people, being women,
and a lot of them being recent settlers
in that community, having moved from
other areas.
We documented
very clear evidence on how drought
impacts livelihoods in the informal
communities, how drought impacts the way
of life,
how drought impacted safety, access to
water, and so on. We have very high
statistics, as high as 82%
of the residents that we surveyed in
Mishepo
indicating having not have access to
water during the drought time. In a
community that has two boreholes, and
these boreholes were affected by lack of
access to electricity to pump the water,
but also water table and water quality.
>> And And if I can come in, Gilbert, here
to ask, so So, what happens those
residents who when the boreholes dry up
or and they cannot access them, the
water quality, the water tables
diminishes. Uh what do the residents do?
Like how how do they access water?
>> Yeah, great point. When 82% of 5,000
people has no access to reliable water,
they tend very unconventional means to
survive.
And what we found is that one,
the biggest proportion
tend to walk very long distances to
access water points that were still
functional.
We are at people walking up to 5 km per
day
to fetch water.
Now, think of this neighborhood with a
very young population, a lot of them
going to school.
And school classes starting at 06:07,
dangerous circumstances that the drought
can lead to. Second, people relied to
nearby neighborhoods, wealthier
neighborhoods. People crossing dangerous
drainage systems and infrastructures
because there's no road to connect these
communities.
They had to walk sometimes at night
in difficult places to access water in
much richer neighborhoods where
sometimes some kind people would just
leave a tap running outside their yards
so that people can get some water.
Third, we saw situations
where people tend to unsafe water
sources
like accessing water from the Bombay
drainage.
That is one of the major drainage
infrastructures where people wash,
garbage dumped, and so on. But that
becomes this survival line, the survival
option.
>> Um if I can come in here, it was very
clear from this study that the residents
of
Maziwa were affected more by the drought
than the better-off communities or
neighborhoods due to the lack of water
and sanitation infrastructure. Um as
Gilbert mentioned, even within Maziwa
itself, we could see that different
groups were affected differently and in
particular women and young people,
particularly the young girls because
they spent most of their times
collecting water and over 60%
of the residents said that drought led
to increased violence in the home. But
this was also recorded outside of the
home as they collected water. So in the
home when women would go out to collect
water, they would have to spend more
hours on the queue walking to the places
where they needed to to get the water.
So sometimes their husbands would think
that they've gone off to see other men.
Why are they taking so long to get to
where they need to be?
And for the young girls, they were
hurled insults and the women too.
Sometimes they were physically
and sexually harassed. So the drought
did bring out a lot of gender-based
violence. On another level, we can look
at issues to do with menstrual
management. For many women and young
girls, it was very difficult for them to
manage their menses because water had to
be rationed. So you had to make a choice
to clean your home, to cook or to ensure
that you're clean.
>> That's really insightful to see how
drought is not just impacting sectors of
the economy, for example, but really
shaping the everyday life and even
intimate lives of of city residents.
I'm interested to see if this resonates
with Jordan, but first I uh I I
understand that Jordan experiences a
different type of drought to Zambia. Is
that correct?
>> Uh thank you, Deena. So to answer your
question, yes, in Jordan drought is not
an emergency like at El Nino, but it's
more a chronic condition. Jordan's main
freshwater resources are rainfall and
groundwater aquifers.
And rainfall has been in steep decline
for years. And the freshwater from
aquifers is being withdrawn beyond
sustainable rechargeable capacity. So
accordingly, this is creating a
condition of chronic ongoing
hydrological drought. Even with
rainfall, there are still water
shortages. The most widely used
indicator for water security globally
identifies that anything less than 500
cubic meters per person is considered
absolute water scarcity. And can you
imagine that in Jordan, it's estimated
the water availability per person is 61
m cubic meter per person. So well below
the absolute water scarcity threshold.
>> That that is quite severe. And what
impacts does this chronic drought have
on Jordan's urban population?
>> So what we did is that we studied a
migrant hosting neighborhood in Mafraq
city called Dahiyat al-Malik Abdullah.
So this neighborhood is a low-income and
highly vulnerable neighborhood. The
majority of residents earn below the
living wage and educational attainment
is relevantly low. And while most of the
neighborhood is connected to the water
network, water is rationed. And
residents only receive water once a week
for a limited number of hours. So even
during those water supply hours, the
water is not that reliable. Accordingly,
our study showed that residents are
unable to fill up their water tanks
before the water supply is cut off on
most weeks. Residents have to have water
tanks definitely to store water to carry
them from one week to another. When
water is supplied again, and one of the
things we found was that refugee
residents in the neighborhood had much
less tanks or water storage capacity in
their homes compared to the Jordanian
nationals.
So, this also made refugees less
adaptable to drought.
>> That's really interesting because it
sort of resonates with what Gilbert and
Melanie were speaking about how drought
is impacting some neighborhoods within a
city more than others, and then it's
impacting some groups within those
neighborhoods more than others. So,
rather than like a homogeneous climatic
condition, looking at it through the
lives of everyday city residents seem to
suggest it's a highly uneven condition.
And I think this opens up another
question. So, how to respond to drought
in cities given its variable impact on
different neighborhoods and different
groups. And Gilbert, I'll turn first to
you to answer this question.
>> What you asked, Trudy, is an interesting
question. And reflecting on
Jordan's experience,
I draw a few parallels and similarities.
The first one is that the informal
settlements,
with or without drought,
already are in water stress
situations. They're in water crisis on a
daily basis. The second similarity is
that for Zambia, drought is now becoming
a regular phenomenon. We had 2024-2025
drought in living memory for many of us.
In 2026-2027
forecast, it clearly shows that we may
experience a worse
drought situation.
So, even before communities like
Maziyopa bounce back, a new crisis is
coming. So, what I think really is the
way and the solution to these problems
is that while Jordan and and Zambia may
be different,
it is important to invest in long-term
adaptation mechanisms,
to hardwire the solutions in the
policies, in the investment processes,
and avoid
emergence kind of response.
If emergence happens,
there's a system that functions. For
example,
when you look at the Lusaka integrated
development plan, which is a plan that
has been formulated in 2025, 2026.
Are we able to find drought response
mechanisms as a priority in terms of
strategies, in terms of in terms of
investment, in terms of urban
management? If we do not have them as a
priority interventions, then we risk
falling back into emergency mode
when drought happens.
>> And Aya, um does this resonate in terms
of long-term solutions instead of uh
emergency-driven
approaches?
>> Uh yes, I totally agree. We need to move
away from fragmented and reactive
approaches to drought towards integrated
long-term solutions.
Al Dahiya is an interesting example of
this because of the high number of
refugee residents who live there. We
often see this trend of refugees moving
into neighborhoods where basic service
provision is more limited. But what this
does is create neighborhoods where
vulnerabilities intersect. For example,
in Al Dahiya, it's similar to Ms. Yopa
in that parts of it are not included in
the city's development plans and is
therefore considered unorganized or
unregulated. Uh so really we have two
main challenges, which are drought and
displacement in these same
neighborhoods, uh that are treated as
emergencies but at the same time they're
treated separately.
So a definitely a different approach is
needed. We need to look at them
together. Working with urban planners
and city government stakeholders, as
well as utility providers, is key.
>> And can I ask about any political
conditions that amplify these
experiences of drought for residents in
those neighborhoods?
>> I'll start with saying that it was very
clear in Al Dhaher.
Um, these political conditions that
impact the residents experiencing
drought because there is a high number
of refugees in this neighborhood. And
our study found that when the water
supply is cut or does not arrive during
the ration hours that it's supposed to
be, the vast majority of Jordanian
residents simply call up the water
utility company and make a complaint.
While on the other side, the refugees do
not do so. It's It's only a minor
portion of them who call the utility.
This is lack of awareness of the
availability to actually call the
utility company to serve them and
support them. And there is a clear lack
of empowerment [clears throat] in
claiming water access. So, all those
challenges are interlinked and they
amplify the exposure to drought from
refugees side.
>> [music]
>> Melanie, any similar experiences in
Maseopa at all?
>> Yes, in in Maseopa there was political
apathy when we started the study.
These are populations who are really
marginalized economically and
politically.
Residents did not want to engage with
the research because they thought
nothing would come of it. Through the
study, we were able to help communities
to mobilize, to organize, and to get
empowered and raise their voices on
issues that affect their community. They
went through social accountability
training and were able to demand their
rights, understanding that there is a
responsibility on their side, but being
able to hold their leaders accountable.
They had an opportunity to sit in a full
council meeting
and raise issues particularly around
tenure.
Drought exist exacerbated their
challenges and this study brought the
issues to light. And so it gave them an
opportunity to present their case. So
the community
is now open and they're able to
now hold their local authority
accountable to put them into the
development planning processes.
>> That's really fascinating. So the
research in a way became a sort of
platform for public engagement between
the community and their local
government.
>> Indeed it did and
we are very excited because what
happened when we had our community
feedback sessions, the community
developed a community manifesto
calling on the local authorities and the
leaders to take urgent action on the
challenges that they face around water,
sanitation, tenure,
livelihoods, gender inequality. It gave
them confidence to speak up and it was
an inclusive process in that it looked
at the residents of Maseopa in their
totality, the women, the young people,
displaced people. They were all part of
the process and they were able to add
their voice to this manifest besto
urging the authorities to ensure that
they are a part of the city development
plans.
>> [music]
>> And so on that hopeful note, at the end
of each episode of Make Change Happen,
we like to bring the conversation round
to that word, change. And we invite each
guest to share their one big thing. So
what's the one big thing you would like
to see, Gilbert, Aya, then Melanie?
>> I think we need to prioritize drought
and drought impacts in city planning and
informal settlement documents,
approaches and financing. So, we need to
center and prioritize drought and
drought impacts.
>> Great, Aia.
>> Uh so, one of the most transformative
shifts we can make is moving from
reactive responses to proactive
planning. It's key. It's essential for
building resilient, sustainable futures.
>> And Melanie.
>> It is important that communities are at
the center of this action
and collaboration should be at the heart
of our work. Thank you.
>> Thank you to our guests for such an
insightful um discussion. To our
listeners for listening so far. Thank
you, everyone, and goodbye.
>> If you'd like to send us your thoughts
and feedback on the discussion, email us
at inforequest@iied.org.
That's inforequest@iied.org.
You can find out more information about
this podcast and our guests and learn
more about IID's research around the
issues covered in today's episode
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