New Water Policy and Practice Issue 4, Number 1, Fall 2017 | Page 41

Sustainable Drainage in Challenging Environments
4. Conclusions
S
ome of the challenges in these environments are similar and some are differ-
ent, and Table 1 summarises these. The main difference is that refugee camps
are planned, but informal settlements are not. In the case of the former, there
are therefore opportunities for knowledge exchange and the possibility of chang-
ing policy. For both settlements, the focus must be on community engagement,
more so where they are informal, as to improve their environment, the residents of
informal settlements need to be proactive and install measures themselves, where-
as in refugee camps, there is an opportunity to include drainage at the first stages
of planning, rather than reacting to flooding once people have moved into the
camp. Sustainable drainage can be designed into these settlements, using native
vegetation and locally available materials and can have multiple benefits and be
flexible, addressing not only drainage but also providing a better quality of life for
residents (Reed, 2017).
Table 1 Summary of the similar and different drainage challenges in informal settlements
and refugee camps
Whilst WASH measures are considered to be a basic human right, as dis-
cussed in the Introduction, that of drainage is not, and yet the lack of it has the
potential to impact negatively on environmental quality and human health. Win-
ter (2015) therefore suggested that there is a need for a change in policy such that
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