Youth Leadership Needed for Climate-Resilient WASH Innovations

Ghana’s Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and the Global Goals remain critical policy ambitions guiding the pursuit of national sustainable development and climate change aspirations. These ambitions also advocate for inclusivity and participatory processes that allow broader engagement of diverse actors from different sectors and constituencies to ensure efficiency and broader reach.

Critical to the success of these localized international ambitions is the role of young people and their freedom, agency, and abilities to fully engage with other stakeholders, especially the government, to advance actionable and impactful policies for social transformation. While some youth groups in Ghana have already shown desire and capacity for leadership, particularly in the pursuit of Ghana’s climate change and green development agenda, the same desire and leadership are yet to be directed at issues around Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) in local communities.

As a result, youth leadership in WASH activities in Ghana has, for the most part, remained a major omission requiring urgent and purposeful intervention. This omission is against the background that issues of WASH remain central and complexly connected to the achievement of most if not all the goals of the other development agenda such as the SDGs and Ghana’s NDCs. It is also against the background that the complexly interconnected nature of all development policies, projects, and programs, particularly as they relate to climate change and sustainable development, require synergistic efforts that ensure efficiency and broad impact. The seeming absence of youth engagement and leadership in WASH programing is therefore counterproductive and becomes urgently imperative that conscious intervention processes are put in place to facilitate unobstructed youth participation and leadership in WASH programming in Ghana.

Youth Leadership in WASH

Effective youth participation and leadership in WASH Activities in Ghana should begin with a recognition and acknowledgement of what WASH means for young people and what roles they can play in bringing about desired changes. This, however, should happen through purposeful processes of engagement and education, as well as the creation of the requisite enabling policy environments that facilitate unimpeded participation. Participation, after all, is about inclusion; it is about the creation of opportunities that encourage individuals and groups to voice their issues and concerns with the aim of contributing to and shaping public policies and decisions. Considering Ghana’s current highly youthful population, who are all either directly or indirectly affected by water, sanitation, and hygiene issues, it becomes a disservice and indeed counterproductive for young people to be marginalized or excluded from political processes and decision making that guide WASH actions in the country.

Even more of a disservice is the fact that young people, excluded from WASH decision making processes today, are also the ones who will have to bear the consequences of such policy choices, especially when they go wrong. Conversely, actions that promote the engagement and inclusion of young people in WASH decision making will ultimately help them to gain critical leadership skills and policy making insights, which will enhance their capacities for transformational leadership. And, as indicated, this is also against the background that some of Ghana’s youth are already engaged in climate and sustainable development advocacy actions and have demonstrated desire and capability to take leadership responsibility.

It becomes only timely and right that the requisite conditions and enabling environments are created, especially within the WASH sector, to expand and deepen the interest and influence of the youth in climate-resilient WASH activities. This can happen through political commitments and that is also where the government and all recognized stakeholders can work together to facilitate youth engagement and leadership in WASH programing in Ghana. More importantly, perhaps, there will be a need to first empower young people with the right information and knowledge to build their confidence and capacity to engage in WASH decision-making.

Towards a Climate-Resilient WASH Agenda 

The reality of climate change and its impacts on the WASH sector necessitate a new WASH agenda, one which is innovative and climate resilient. Such an agenda becomes critical essential and from the perspective that climate change manifests through water (the lack of it or excess of it) to make climate change risk fundamentally a water risk which also affects WASH services provision.

Both the Agenda 2030 and Ghana’s Nationally Determined Contributions to global climate actions lay out a clear path and vision for a sustainable WASH future and have received unprecedented support across governments, civil society, businesses, and citizens alike. Central to the achievement of these WASH ambitions is the climate change challenge and the imperative for sustainable water resources management to assure quality and effective WASH services provision. The challenge, therefore, for the WASH sector is to explore and understand the nature of the climate change challenge and its impacts on the sector both now and going into the future.

WASH advocacy in Ghana, as spearheaded by organizations such as UNICEF, WaterAid Ghana, CONIWAS and a host of other committed organizations, have since focused their efforts on creating a climate-resilient WASH sector. The aim has been to ensure that the needed scientific knowledge is available to support WASH programming.

They aim also to advocate for key national policies to integrate key climate change and water considerations to support WASH actions at different levels and contexts.

WaterAid Ghana has been particularly visible and forceful in its advocacy for a climate-resilient WASH sector. They have been at the forefront of community-focused climate impact research on water resources and its resources on WASH service provision. In doing this, WaterAid Ghana has also been concerned about issues of youth voices and leadership in WASH actions and has committed resources and processes that have contributed to the building of young peoples’ advocacy and policy leadership capacity in the WASH sector.

While these are encouraging and in the right direction, a lot more needs to be done and that is where government and other WASH stakeholders may have to foreground issues of youth engagement and leadership to bring energy, freshness, and innovation in the provision of climate-resilient WASH services in Ghana.

Written by Bob Manteaw, PhD, Senior Research Fellow, Climate Resilience and Sustainable Development, Center for Climate Change and Sustainability Studies, University of Ghana