UNICEF East Asia and Pacific Regional Office Partnership

Group photo of UNICEF East Asia Pacific Partnership.

This strategic partnership supports the UTS Institute for Sustainable Futures (ISF) and UNICEF Offices in Asia and the Pacific to jointly work on key emerging topics and knowledge generation that support improved policy and practice. The partnership focuses on three key areas:

climate resilience
safely managed services
inclusion gender rights and accountability.

Across these three areas, multiple projects at regional of country level intend to inform the UNICEF WASH projects and make wider sector contributions. The overall goal of the partnership is to:

generate and engage on new knowledge that increases progress towards resilient, inclusive, safely managed services
address knowledge gaps and strengthen analysis and evidence to policy links throughout WASH and climate policy in East Asia and the Pacific
build the capacity of UNICEF, ISF, partner governments and partner research institutions through shared learning and research.

Currently through this partnership, ISF and UNICEF are collaborating on the following projects:

Monitoring WASH contribution to community resilience
This project involves the development of guidance for UNICEF EAPRO, its local government partners and other WASH sector actors on steps to monitor and improve the ways in which their climate-resilient rural WASH interventions are contributing to broader (i.e. beyond WASH) community resilience to climate change. This includes engagement with Papua New Guinea, Cambodia and Timor-Leste.

Climate resilient WASH in Solomon Islands and Kiribati
Through engagement with local WASH and climate change adaption governance partners, ISF, UNICEF Solomon Islands and UNICEF Kiribati are developing Climate Rationales for each country. This will provide a climate science basis for resilient WASH solutions and recommendations on how best to provide WASH services under future climate scenarios.

CIRCLE WASH learning brief and webinar
Circular economy approaches can strengthen WASH services while driving climate resilience, inclusion and wider sustainability. ISF are providing guidance to UNICEF EAPRO through new thinking and case study insights about the potential of circular economy ideas for water and sanitation service systems.

Human rights to water and sanitation webinar
Realising the right to safe drinking water and sanitation is a key motivation of our work in the sector. Through the partnership, ISF and UNICEF jointly conducted a webinar highlighting the importance of integrating human rights principles into WASH programming encouraging engagement with global partnerships. This had the aim of empowering local governments to play their mandated roles, and working with civil society organisations on advocacy and social accountability approaches.

Laos water safety planning and gender inclusion
Working with UNICEF Laos and the Laos Gender Development Association, ISF is providing recommendations to improve water safety planning guidelines, life-cycle costing analysis and gender inclusion in WASH projects in the country.

Vietnam Monitoring Climate Resilient WASH
UNICEF Viet Nam and ISF are designing tools to describe the results of renewable energy solutions for climate resilient water supplies implemented by UNICEF Viet Nam. The monitoring tools focus on rural water service delivery, energy efficiency, and climate resilience indicators for measuring the success of the solutions.

Vanuatu Groundwater Mapping
UNICEF Vanuatu and ISF are working to address critical information gaps in water resource knowledge in Vanuatu. Through this research the project team is identifying, collating and digitising data on groundwater use, sources, depth quality, lithography, equity and affordability.

Assessment of WASH Financing in East Asia
This assessment examines the flows of funding for WASH in key countries in East Asia. The research covers funding from households, governments and donors. It is analysing changes in funding levels over time, the correlation of funding levels with WASH service needs and the mechanisms and sectors that are prioritised in WASH financing.

East Asia Regional Sanitation Emissions Strategy
This research analyses the levels of greenhouse gas emissions from sanitation services, including in China. The project will inform procedures to estimate sanitation emissions in the region and will contribute to a regional strategy to appropriately manage emissions from sanitation services.

RESEARCH OUTPUTS

Literature review: Determinants of community resilience to climate change and the contribution of water, sanitation and hygiene (2024) (Literature review)