Published on: 23/06/2025
Resilient water and sanitation services support resilient communities. People around the world facing the reality of climate change—and the floods and droughts that define so much of its impact— are strengthened by systems that continue to deliver safe drinking water and sanitation services regardless. For these systems to serve their purpose, they must themselves be resilient to climate extremes. Water and sanitation are critical elements of climate adaptation, yet as the cover photo featuring the Kasenda hybrid pumping system in rural Uganda shows, they have a role to play in mitigation too, by reducing the carbon footprint and enhancing the financial viability of treating and delivering drinking water and managing human waste.
Exploring and strengthening linkages between the traditional water and sanitation sector and other crucial areas – including climate, health, and social justice — has become central to our work. Since 2023, we've been actively extending our systems thinking, partnerships, and work beyond the narrow confines of the water and sanitation sector. In practice, it means actively reaching out and engaging with new partners and sectors.
Guided by our Destination 2030 strategy, we are doing this at all levels of water, sanitation, and allied systems –from local to national and global. Our foundational belief remains unchanged: change will only come when national actors, especially governments, commit to it. What is evolving is our understanding of where to find that systems leadership; that effectively championing water and sanitation means moving beyond these sectors, sharing challenges with others, and engaging diverse leadership to address shared obstacles.
You will find examples of this approach throughout this year's report – in our new WASH Systems Academy course on climate resilient services, in blogs and thought pieces from our climate and water innovation group, in our field work on climate resilient WASH, and in our advocacy to embed water and sanitation within national visions of sustainable development through our Heads of State Initiatives. Across all our work, we connect across systems boundaries and champion visionary systems leadership. A growing part of our global influencing work is being done in collaboration with our One For All (OFA) alliance partners (Water For People and Water For Good). In a first, colleagues from all our teams attended Stockholm World Water Week as part of a joint OFA team and we will finalise registration of OFA UK in 2025.
As the world changes, so must we. In 2024, we continued building our decentralised leadership model, working steadily toward becoming a federation of national organisations by 2026. At the heart of this transformation is our understanding that effectively influencing systems change demands legitimacy, and being recognised as a local actor – albeit one within a global network – increases that legitimacy.
During the year, we experienced precursors to the shocks currently shaking the global aid system, resulting in a €1.2 million (10%) shortfall in anticipated income. Despite this challenge, careful cost-reduction measures helped us break even. Looking forward, we expect instability and change to be the norm for the foreseeable future, calling for even greater agility and dedication from our teams.
Nevertheless, we believe we are on the right track to remain relevant in a changing world and to the needs of our friends and partners in the communities and countries where we work. Thank you to all our staff, partners, and funders for your hard work and support during 2024. We look forward to continuing to deliver real change that improves lives in 2025.
Read our Annual Report 2024, our Monitoring Report 2024 and our 2024 Financial Report for more highlights and details of our work.
