“The success or failure of cities will shape opportunities and quality of life for a growing share of the world’s population,” says the National Intelligence Council in its recent analysis of security risks the world will likely face by 2040. This is especially true for densely populated coastal and low-lying areas. The western United States continues to suffer extreme drought and fires after breaking heat records this summer. China has experienced significant flooding, highlighting its ill-preparedness for dealing with the effects of climate change. Parts of Brazil are suffering drought while others received unexpected snow and ice. Climate-related disasters have nearly doubled over the last two decades, causing over one million fatalities, affecting nearly 4 billion people, and costing almost 3 trillion dollars. At the heart of these impacts are cities. 

Achieving Sustainable Development Goal 6.1 for safe, sufficient, and available water has always been important. Compounding challenges—from climate change and increasing migration within and across borders to COVID-19 and its multiple variants—makes achieving the human right to water more urgent. But what is often missed in discussions related to water access is that what determines access to safe and sufficient water is about more than gaps in governance or lack of funding—it is intertwined with entrenched inequality in societies, including the planning of urban spaces.

The recently released draft report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) lays out in no uncertain terms that we face an insurmountable challenge in addressing climate change and its impacts. One shocking takeaway is that sea-level rise is now thought to be irreversible. Indeed, rising temperatures and changing weather patterns threaten to send some cities under water, while causing others to dry up. These opposing challenges increasingly threaten the lives and livelihoods of people in many countries as rapid urbanization is making cities even more densely populated. Floods and droughts threatening the world’s cities will force governments of the world to reevaluate the quality of their infrastructure, their disaster management strategies, and of course, their environmental footprints.

Over 79 million people are currently forcibly displaced within their own country or across international borders as a result of conflict or natural disaster. As Filippo Grandi, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, explained in 2020, “resolving forced displacement is not only a moral or humanitarian imperative, but also deals with issues at the heart of the [Security] Council’s mandate to maintain international peace and security.”

“Never let a good crisis go to waste,” said Winston Churchill. Like other acute stressors, the COVID-19 pandemic acts as a multiplier of chronic or pre-existing vulnerabilities, such as the challenges of servicing rapidly growing informal populations, particularly in urban settings. This multiplier effect may accelerate water insecurity at unprecedented levels. However, together with UNESCO Intergovernmental Hydrological Program (IHP), we’re reflecting on the possibility that COVID-19 can act as an accelerator of positive action toward achieving Sustainable Development Goal 6 on water. The nexus between issues and urban water security is particularly important.

Until 2016, the agrarian residents of east Kenya’s Kitui county had never encountered a water quality monitor like Mary Musenya. Wearing a bright blue company jersey and furnished with sample bottles and plastic trays, the young Kenyan is a water safety officer for FundiFix, a tiny rural water supply service company. She is one of 20 staff who manage 130 pumps, plus pipes and water tanks that serve 82,000 people across a 1,000 square-mile service area in Kitui and Kwale counties. 

Do you remember a year ago when many of us traveled regularly? Do you remember the experience of flying into a major city somewhere in the world, picking up your bags in a modern airport (that probably functioned more efficiently than in the United States), and getting a vehicle to take you downtown? After leaving the airport, we would often drive past miles of informal settlements—self-built shelters unkindly called “slums” much of the time. We may have even found ourselves asking why local authorities “don’t do something” about them.

As the climate crisis continues to worsen, climate finance remains a fraction of what is needed. The Climate Policy Initiative estimates that $579 billion was spent on average on climate finance in 2017/18. This includes domestic and international investment from both the public and private sectors towards climate mitigation and adaptation actions. Of this amount, only $30 billion—five percent—was allocated for climate adaptation. This amount stands in stark contrast to $180 billion, which the Global Commission on Adaptation estimates is needed every year to build resilience to current and future climate impacts. This catastrophic funding gap is intensifying climate security threats and elevating the vulnerability of people across the world, particularly in coastal urban centers.