Sustainable Water and Sanitation Solutions Are Restoring Dignity in Refugee Camps

Nature-based water management in humanitarian settlements is delivering co-benefits for public health, local economies, well-being and biodiversity — turning short-term shelters into resilient, long-term homes.

When most people picture a refugee camp, they imagine a temporary setting — a waypoint where displaced people pause before returning home or resettling elsewhere. The reality is starkly different: most refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) live in camps for years, often decades. That gap between perception and reality has enormous consequences for how these settlements manage water.

A Global Displacement Crisis Meets Shrinking Solutions

The world is experiencing one of the largest displacement crises in modern history. Conflict, persecution, and climate-driven hazards continue to force millions from their homes each year, while opportunities for permanent resettlement shrink. More refugees and IDPs are left living in informal camps for years with no clear timeline for return or relocation.

This protracted reality clashes with how many camps are designed: as short-term emergency responses rather than long-term urban settlements. The result is a widening mismatch between emergency-grade infrastructure and the evolving needs of displaced communities — particularly around surface water and wastewater management.

This challenge was the focus of a recent webinar hosted by the International Water Management Institute’s (IWMI) Frontlines Learning Exchange (FLEX), titled “Green and grey infrastructure solutions for fragile urban communities and displacement landscapes.”

Water: A Central Humanitarian Challenge

According to Muhammad Khalifa, IWMI regional researcher on Integrated Modeling and Assessment, urban areas everywhere face complex infrastructure challenges — but these intensify dramatically in fragile, informal, and displacement settings, where communities often confront flooding, poor drainage, heat stress, water scarcity, waste mismanagement, pollution and food insecurity simultaneously, frequently without the resources to respond.

Water is often among the first casualties of displacement. It is a frequent target in conflict zones, and access to clean water — essential for hydration, hygiene and food preparation — is one of the earliest losses refugees experience. Yet surface water management is routinely overlooked when settlements are planned.

Compounding the problem, governments often situate refugee camps on undesirable land unsuitable for farming, such as flood plains or rocky terrain, making reliable water access and disaster protection harder to achieve. The camps also alter the landscape, introducing impermeable surfaces that increase runoff and flooding, while insufficient drainage leads to pooling and contamination from poorly managed waste. In effect, refugee camps function as urban spaces and hydrological systems in their own right, often housing thousands of people and reshaping the water landscapes in which they’re built.

There is growing momentum to integrate climate adaptation into humanitarian planning from day one. Prioritizing sustainable water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) systems alongside green infrastructure can simultaneously deliver climate resilience, community well-being, and environmental benefits.

Combining Green and Grey Infrastructure

Green infrastructure uses natural processes and vegetation — such as rain gardens and bioswales — to manage water, reduce flood risk and support biodiversity. Grey infrastructure relies on engineered, often concrete-based systems like dams and stormwater drains. According to IWMI, the two approaches work best when combined into hybrid systems tailored to a community’s needs.

Mitchell McTough, an IWMI researcher focused on Water, Conflicts and Resilience, champions one such hybrid model: sustainable urban drainage systems (SuDS), which align modern drainage infrastructure with natural water processes, maximizing the benefit of surface runoff through improved infiltration and retention.

SuDS aim to manage water quantity and quality while enhancing amenity value and biodiversity. A topographical survey conducted before a camp is built allows infrastructure to follow the land’s natural contours. Features like filter strips, swales and trickle trenches remove pollutants and regulate flow, while improved waste management and rainwater harvesting cut contamination and water demand.

Real Benefits for Camp Residents

For residents, these interventions translate into tangible improvements in daily life. Nature-based water solutions double as parks and recreational spaces, offering therapeutic value to communities under psychological strain. Rain gardens support urban agriculture, boosting food security. Perhaps most importantly, these green spaces help camps feel less like concrete sprawls and more like genuine communities — places people can call home, even temporarily. The infrastructure also creates habitats for plants, insects and animals, enhancing biodiversity in and around the camp.

Grey infrastructure — tanks, pumps, wells and filtration systems — remains essential for water and sanitation, but it often depends on materials that can’t be sourced locally and requires external skilled labor. It also introduces impermeable surfaces that struggle with flooding and can create stagnant water, a breeding ground for disease-carrying mosquitoes. Where green infrastructure can substitute or supplement grey systems, it delivers stronger environmental and social returns.

Community-Led Design: The Key to Success

Experts emphasize that sustainable water systems only succeed when refugees and IDPs are involved from the earliest planning stages. Involving them in the design, construction and maintenance of SuDS, often through cash-for-work programs, builds local ownership while providing economic empowerment.

This approach was put into practice at the Gawilan Refugee Camp in northern Iraq, which has hosted Syrian refugees since 2013. As part of his doctoral research, McTough consulted camp residents through interviews, surveys and focus groups to identify their primary surface water challenges. Combined with topographical and water quality data, this input shaped a tailored SuDS for the camp.

Refugees were directly involved in constructing the system — and compensated for their work — building rain gardens, filter strips, gabions, micro-check dams, soak-away pits, bioretention ponds and conveyance swales. Nearly a decade later, the system remains fully functional, continuing to improve amenity value and biodiversity while serving as a model for other camps worldwide.

A Model for the Future of Humanitarian Planning

While SuDS remain a relatively new concept in humanitarian infrastructure planning, advocates argue they have the potential to reshape how refugee camps are designed and managed — centering community well-being, ecological health and climate resilience, grounded in the recognition that the urgency of a displacement crisis does not diminish a person’s right to a dignified home.

IWMI continues to lead efforts to bring scientific research into some of the world’s most difficult and fragile environments. As Sandra Ruckstuhl, IWMI research group leader on Fragility, Conflict, Livelihoods and Water, put it: displacement is increasingly protracted, and humanitarian planning must evolve beyond short-term emergency response. Water, she notes, is more than a humanitarian necessity — it is a foundation for reducing risk, strengthening climate resilience, restoring ecosystems, improving public health, and building more dignified communities.

Source: International Water Management Institute (IWMI) Frontlines Learning Exchange (FLEX).