Date: 2010
Author: HFP

This study looks at 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, ie how current trends may evolve to produce surprising new outcomes. The study maps the relationship between Wat/San stress and other causal factors including conflict, political violence, corruption and epidemic disease. It also extrapolates these relationships into the future using two case studies to explore scenarios of complex humanitarian crisis driven by Wat/San stress. It concludes with a discussion of the implications of such future conditions for the present-day humanitarian sector.