IAS 2025 Editorial – In the year of the UN Climate Change Conference (COP) in Brazil, what will happen to sanitation?
In the context of the climate emergency, taking care of water is a structural strategy for building resilience in Brazil's cities
Published in 31 Mar 2025
Written by By the IAS team
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In November 2025 in Belém, Brazil will host COP 30 – the Conference of the Parties on Climate Change. Until then, we will hear a lot about climate, global warming, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and adaptation. One term that may not appear as often in this context is sanitation.
It is through water that we feel the effects of climate change on a daily basis, whether through lack (prolonged droughts) or abundance (heavy rains that cause flooding, waterlogging, landslides and other risk situations).
At the beginning of this year alone there have been five heatwaves and several episodes of extreme rainfall in various parts of Brazil. The increased frequency and intensity of these events have a major impact on our well-being, compromising existing urban infrastructures, calling into question their suitability and stressing the urgency of reviewing our urban development models.
It is clear that sanitation in Brazilian cities, which is incomplete and precarious and to which the entire population still does not have access, is not up to the challenge posed by the climate emergency.
In February, the IAS, motivated by the need to provide more information on the role of sanitation in adapting cities to these scenarios, launched the publication “Adaptation and Sanitation – For a sector resilient to climate change,” in which we highlight the structuring role of sanitation in more robust strategies that are proving successful in dealing with extreme climate events in various countries outside Brazil, thereby making cities more resilient.
At the federal level in Brazil, the government is working to produce the Climate Adaptation Plan, with its 16 sectoral plans – available for public consultation until April 25. The topic of sanitation, however, is dispersed, appearing partly in the Water Resources sectoral plan and partly in the Cities sectoral plan. This fragmentation does not help adaptation actions or strategies in which sanitation is a protagonist. Neither does it reflect the current context of changes in the sector, with the challenges to make sanitation universally available by 2033, the volume of investments, and the new territorial arrangements.
IAS has been monitoring these changes in the sector since the review of the Sanitation Legal Framework (Federal Law 11,445/2007 amended by Law 14,026/2020) and has prepared the “The New 2024 Sanitation Chart” , which will be updated in 2025.
At the state level, an emblematic example of the transformations in the sector was the privatization of Sabesp (Water and Sewage Service Provider of the State of São Paulo), the largest sanitation company in Latin America and responsible for a third of investments in sanitation in Brazil. In the new model, a single contract was signed for the provision of water and sewage in 375 municipalities, in a new joint management arrangement between these municipalities and the state government. The questions remain as to how this new private arrangement will respond to situations such as a probable water crisis, as predicted by SP Águas (São Paulo Water), a review of the amount of water that is withdrawn from dams and integrated systems (for the Metropolitan Region of São Paulo, for example), and the role of Sabesp in more robust investments in the protection and conservation of water sources, among others.
At the municipal level, there is a loss of protagonism of these federative units in the integrated management of the four components of sanitation (water, sewage, solid waste management and urban drainage). The Legal Framework empowered state governments to direct policies for water and sewage. As a result, municipalities have lost out on the coordination of urban water management. And this is precisely the area where water is literally waist-deep. The challenges are more practical, with rains causing immense disruption and exposing the lack of preparation of Brazilian cities: 83% of municipalities do not have flood warning systems. Another point is that adaptation plans are drawn up by municipalities, but in practice they are not implemented. This is the case of PlanClima (Climate Plan) in the city of São Paulo, which dates back to 2019.
It is essential to incorporate sanitation into the discussions in a year in which there will be even more attention to climate issues, innovative solutions and approaches that should not bring more of the same. It is necessary to look at these challenges and strengthen the actions and necessary corrections so that sanitation actually takes on a structuring role in dealing with extreme climate events and building resilience.