Urban Catastrophes: Water Sanitation Dimension

This paper is about the future of water and sanitation stress (Wat/San) in urban slums and how such stress is likely to exacerbate other humanitarian crises over time. It is intended to explore the interlinkages between different crisis variables from a futures perspective, i.e., how current trends may evolve to producing surprising new outcomes.

The rapid growth in urban population around the world has led to a proliferation of urban slums in many developing world cities. UN HABITAT estimates that by 2050, over 5 billion people will be living in cities, with an average of 30% living in slums. The majority of slums lack access sufficient water and adequate sanitation.

This report was written by Dr Karen Hudson-Edwards of the Birkbeck School of Earth Sciences, University College London and Noah Raford, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Humanitarian Futures Programme, King’s College London.