Water and sanitation beyond negotiable sustainability in the post-COP30 urban climate agenda

1 Introduction

The 30th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, held in Belém in 2025, reinforced the orientation of the international climate agenda toward implementation, adaptation finance and the monitoring of commitments undertaken by governments and non-State actors. Water, sanitation and water resources management formed part of this movement through initiatives focused on participatory governance, safe access to water, service resilience and the mobilization of climate finance. Their incorporation is particularly relevant in cities, where droughts, floods, contamination of water sources and operational disruptions affect systems historically marked by inequalities in coverage, quality, continuity and sanitary protection (High-Level Champions for Climate Action, 2025; COP29 and COP30 Presidencies, 2025).

Drinking water, sanitation and hygiene, internationally grouped under the acronym WASH, constitute fundamental dimensions of climate adaptation. Wastewater management is treated here as part of the sanitation service chain. The continuity of water supply, the safe removal of excreta, wastewater treatment and adequate hygiene conditions shape exposure to disease, the capacity to cope with extreme events and the ability of populations to remain in their territories. In 2024, 2.1 billion people lacked safely managed drinking water services, 3.4 billion lacked safely managed sanitation and 1.7 billion lacked basic hygiene services at home [WHO (World Health Organization) and UNICEF (United Nations Children's Fund), 2025].

The persistence of these deficits expresses unequal patterns of urbanization, investment distribution, political recognition and protection of life. Climate change deepens such inequalities by compromising water availability and quality, damaging networks and treatment facilities, causing sewage overflows and disrupting essential services. The severity of these effects depends on the social, territorial and institutional conditions that precede the climatic event, with more severe consequences for impoverished, racialized, Indigenous and peripheral populations and for those living in territories marked by infrastructural and environmental precarity [IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), 2022; Araos et al., 2021; Borg et al., 2021; Chaudhry, 2024].

The climate vulnerability of WASH therefore results from the interaction between environmental hazards and historically produced forms of urban space. Formal coverage, continuity, quality, affordability and service safety vary across territories and social groups. These differences also shape the capacity to participate in decisions concerning infrastructure, investment and adaptation. Systems technically exposed to droughts and floods are embedded in cities where public protection, sanitary risks and care work are already distributed in profoundly unequal ways (Hyde-Smith et al., 2022; Abdulhadi et al., 2024).

Under the regime established by the Paris Agreement, nationally determined contributions, commonly known as NDCs, bring together the climate actions periodically communicated by countries. They express mitigation efforts and, increasingly, adaptation measures, while connecting with mechanisms for transparency, finance and implementation monitoring. The inclusion of water and sanitation in NDCs, national adaptation plans and the indicators of the Global Goal on Adaptation raises their political priority and creates institutional conditions for mobilizing resources, assigning responsibilities and tracking outcomes [UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change), 2015, 2025, 2026].

As water and sanitation enter this architecture, they are formulated through categories such as resilience, vulnerability, investment, scalability, measurement and risk reduction. Commitments, targets, indicators and transparency mechanisms convert political declarations into institutional responsibilities and make implementation trackable. These instruments also establish criteria of legibility, shaping which problems receive greater attention, which interventions become financeable and which outcomes are recognized as climate contributions. Studies on the growing convergence between global water and climate agendas show that issues associated with water resources management and resilience have gained prominence, while equitable access, human rights and water justice receive less systematic treatment (Altemus Cullen et al., 2025).

Recent literature has advanced the characterization of climate impacts on water supply, sanitation, drainage and wastewater treatment, as well as the development of strategies to strengthen the adaptive capacity of these systems (Hyde-Smith et al., 2022; Ferdowsi et al., 2024). Research on equity and climate justice has also demonstrated that adaptation outcomes depend on power structures, conditions of participation and the social and territorial distribution of risks and benefits (Araos et al., 2021; Newell et al., 2021). Less attention, however, has been devoted to the political consequences of translating WASH into targets, resilient assets, financeable projects and reportable outcomes, particularly regarding the effects of this selection on territories marked by persistent sanitary inequalities.

The problem examined in this article concerns the political, epistemological and territorial terms through which water and sanitation are incorporated into the climate agenda. The prioritization of WASH as resilient infrastructure, an adaptation asset or an investment sector favors particular forms of intervention and assigns less centrality to dimensions related to dignity, care, everyday contamination, memory, self-determination and territorial permanence. This tension requires an analytical approach capable of apprehending both the institutional capacity of climate instruments and the limits of the categories through which they organize the crisis.

The guiding question asks what climate governance renders visible when it converts water, sanitation and adaptation into negotiable commitments, financeable projects, measurable targets and reportable outcomes, as well as which dimensions remain marginalized when bodies, waters and territories are treated as separate spheres. The article critically analyzes the terms through which WASH has been incorporated into climate governance in the post-COP30 context and examines their implications for environmental justice, urban inequalities and territoriality.

The central argument is that the increased climate visibility of water and sanitation constitutes a necessary advance whose capacity to promote justice remains conditioned by the grammar of negotiable sustainability. The concept designates the rationality through which the socio-environmental crisis gains institutional recognition by being translated into commitments, indicators, financial flows, scalable projects and comparable outcomes. This rationality organizes institutional responsibilities and structures possibilities for implementation, while concentrating attention on dimensions compatible with measurement, investment and monitoring.

The article proposes understanding WASH as relational urban infrastructure. Networks, treatment systems, sanitation facilities, urban rivers, channels, technologies and hygiene practices organize relations among bodies, waters, territories, institutions, health, care, race, gender, class and everyday urban life. This formulation broadens the assessment of adaptation by articulating the physical robustness of infrastructure, the distribution of protection, the realization of rights, the recognition of political subjects and the confrontation of historical processes of unequal exposure.

The study develops a conceptual theoretical-analytical essay grounded in documentary analysis, connecting the critical framework presented in the literature review with an interpretation of documents associated with climate governance and the COP30 cycle. The following section brings together debates on WASH, adaptation, urban inequalities, environmental justice and territoriality. The subsequent sections present the theoretical-analytical approach, the results, the discussion and the concluding remarks.

2 Literature review

2.1 Water, sanitation, climate adaptation and urban inequalities

The relationship between water, sanitation and climate change has gained increasing prominence in the literature on urban adaptation. Service safety depends on hydrological, environmental, infrastructural and institutional conditions affected by rising temperatures, changing precipitation patterns and the intensification of droughts, floods and other extreme events [IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), 2022; Hyde-Smith et al., 2022; Ferdowsi et al., 2024]. Water supply, sanitation, drainage, wastewater treatment and hygiene systems constitute infrastructure essential to health and to the reproduction of urban life. Their adaptation therefore forms part of the material conditions that shape the differentiated capacity of people and territories to cope with climate impacts.

This growing centrality emerges against a backdrop of persistent inequalities in water and sanitation. In 2024, 2.1 billion people lacked safely managed drinking water services, 3.4 billion lacked safely managed sanitation and 1.7 billion lacked basic hygiene services at home. For drinking water, safe management requires availability on premises, access when needed and freedom from contamination. The existence of a water source or physical connection alone therefore does not constitute substantive access to the service. Between 2015 and 2024, urban coverage of drinking water and hygiene remained virtually stagnant, while service deficits continued to be concentrated in low-income countries, fragile contexts, impoverished groups, ethnic minorities, Indigenous Peoples, women and children [WHO (World Health Organization) and UNICEF (United Nations Children's Fund), 2025].

Climate hazards affect each stage of the service chain in distinct ways. Prolonged droughts reduce raw water availability, place pressure on reservoirs and aquifers and intensify competition among urban, agricultural, industrial and energy uses. Floods damage networks and treatment facilities, disrupt energy-dependent systems, cause sewage overflows and increase the presence of sediments, pathogens and contaminants in water sources. Higher temperatures increase evaporation losses and alter water quality, while sea-level rise threatens coastal aquifers and infrastructure through salinization and flooding [IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), 2022; Hyde-Smith et al., 2022; Ferdowsi et al., 2024].

Ferdowsi et al. (2024) identify water scarcity and severe flooding among the main risks affecting urban water infrastructure. The authors emphasize that a substantial share of these systems was designed according to historical patterns of variability that no longer adequately represent current and future climate conditions. In the sanitation sector, Hyde-Smith et al. (2022) demonstrate that climate impacts extend across containment, collection, conveyance, treatment, disposal and reuse. Vulnerability varies according to the technological solution adopted, institutional capacity for operation and maintenance and the territorial conditions in which systems are embedded.

Urban growth and expanding demand intensify these pressures. He et al. (2021) estimated that 933 million urban residents lived in regions affected by water scarcity in 2016 and projected that this population could reach between 1.693 and 2.373 billion by 2050, depending on the socioeconomic and climate scenarios considered. Common responses include expanding storage capacity, interbasin transfers, groundwater extraction, desalination and efficiency improvements. The feasibility of these alternatives depends, however, on geographical, economic and institutional conditions and may entail significant environmental, social and territorial costs (He et al., 2021).

The literature on urban utilities also reveals a gap between projected risks and effective adaptive capacity. Becher et al. (2024), in an analysis of approximately 5,600 water utilities, show that leakage reduction, reservoir expansion and desalination can reduce the risk of service interruptions, although their adoption depends on technical capacity, financial sustainability and institutional support. Narrow cost-benefit criteria may undervalue investments that are essential to service security, particularly in localities with limited revenue-raising capacity. Economic assessment must incorporate benefits such as disease reduction, time savings, continuity of supply and the protection of historically underserved populations (Becher et al., 2024).

Climate impacts and adaptation responses are unevenly distributed across urban space. Service interruptions, contamination and scarcity affect territories already marked by pronounced inequalities in coverage, quality, continuity, drainage, sewage collection and ability to pay Borg et al., (2021; Chaudhry, 2024; Abdulhadi et al., 2024). In informal settlements, inadequate services intersect with high population density, insecure tenure, poor housing conditions and occupation of areas exposed to floods and landslides. The review by (Borg et al. 2021) shows that these territories concentrate risks related to heat, waterborne and vector-borne diseases and inadequate sanitation, although assessments of the concrete health effects of adaptation interventions remain scarce.

The relationship among climate, WASH and health is mediated by pre-existing social and environmental conditions. Safe water, adequate separation of excreta, housing, food security and access to health services shape both exposure and the capacity to respond to extreme events [IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), 2022; Borg et al., 2021; Chaudhry, 2024]. Impoverished urban populations face direct impacts, including floods and heat waves, as well as indirect effects associated with deteriorating water, sanitation, food and housing conditions. The severity of harm therefore results from the interaction between the magnitude of climate hazards and the unequal distribution of infrastructure, income, public protection and decision-making power (Araos et al., 2021; Chaudhry, 2024).

The categories of informal settlement and vulnerable population may themselves conceal relevant internal differences. The review by Abdulhadi et al. (2024), based on 33 studies, identified infrastructural, economic, sociocultural, environmental and institutional barriers to access to WASH and housing. Location, income, tenure status, gender, ethnic belonging and position within the household shape everyday experiences of services. Many households combine public taps, shared facilities, neighbors' homes and improvised arrangements, reorganizing mobility, time and care work to meet basic needs.

Gender inequalities are particularly relevant in this process. Women and girls assume a disproportionate share of activities related to water collection, hygiene, care for sick household members and the domestic management of scarcity. Water insecurity increases workloads, health risks, exposure to violence and constraints on education and social participation. Even so, the relationships among gender, urban water insecurity and climate adaptation remain insufficiently incorporated into the literature and into instruments linked to the Sustainable Development Goals (Tandon et al., 2024; Abdulhadi et al., 2024).

Recent scholarship has consolidated WASH as an indispensable dimension of climate adaptation and demonstrated that service reliability requires changes in infrastructure planning, design, operation, maintenance and financing [IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), 2022; Hyde-Smith et al., 2022; Ferdowsi et al., 2024]. It has also shown that climate risks are mediated by inequalities related to income, gender, ethnic belonging, location, tenure status and institutional capacity (Borg et al., 2021; Araos et al., 2021; Chaudhry, 2024; Abdulhadi et al., 2024).

A substantial part of the literature nevertheless remains focused on asset robustness, aggregate water availability, operational continuity and the relationship between investment and risk reduction. Expanding coverage and strengthening physical resilience are necessary conditions, but they are insufficient for understanding who receives protection, who bears the costs of adaptation and which inequalities may be reproduced by infrastructure classified as resilient. The following subsection develops this problem by examining how climate governance, financing and measurement instruments incorporate or subordinate environmental justice, participation and territoriality.

2.2 Climate governance, environmental justice and territoriality

The incorporation of water and sanitation into climate governance involves more than adding new issues to pre-existing instruments. It reshapes how problems are framed, selects the dimensions recognized as priorities and influences which solutions come to be regarded as implementable. As water and sanitation become associated with adaptation, nationally determined contributions, financing and transparency mechanisms, they gain greater institutional visibility while also being interpreted through categories specific to the climate regime, including resilience, measurement, scalability and risk reduction (Newell et al., 2021; Altemus Cullen et al., 2025).

In their analysis of the debates held at the COP26 Water Pavilion and their continuation at subsequent conferences, Altemus Cullen et al. (2025) identified stronger connections among water, adaptation, mitigation and the goals of the Paris Agreement. This integration favored issues related to water resources management and resilience, whereas universal and equitable access to water, sanitation and hygiene remained less closely connected to the climate agenda. The study shows that institutional framings shape the distribution of political attention, as problems capable of demonstrating direct climate benefits tend to acquire greater legitimacy than interventions justified primarily through health, dignity and human rights (Altemus Cullen et al., 2025).

The growing presence of WASH in climate instruments should therefore be understood as a simultaneously inclusive and selective process. Targets, indicators, financing mechanisms and monitoring systems are necessary to convert political commitments into public action. These instruments also establish criteria of legibility by defining which needs can be demonstrated, compared and reported. The issue extends beyond the presence of water and sanitation in the climate agenda to the terms under which this incorporation occurs and the effects produced when sanitation needs are translated primarily into risks, assets, projects and measurable outcomes (Newell et al., 2021; Altemus Cullen et al., 2025).

Environmental justice provides a framework for examining these processes beyond the formal distribution of resources. Schlosberg (2007) demonstrates that justice encompasses distributive, procedural and recognition-based dimensions, connected to the conditions required for the realization of individual and collective capabilities. This formulation shifts the analysis from who receives infrastructure or financing to how particular groups, territories and forms of knowledge are recognized in the definition of problems. In contexts of inequality, participation in a previously designed policy differs substantially from influence over priorities, investment criteria and the very meaning of appropriate adaptation.

The literature on transformative climate justice advances this argument by placing power relations at the center of the analysis. Newell et al. (2021) maintain that the unequal effects of climate change and institutional responses cannot be separated from the social, political and economic structures that produce vulnerability. From this perspective, justice reaches beyond the subsequent distribution of adaptation benefits. It requires examining who defines pathways of change, who controls resources, which inequalities are preserved and which populations are expected to adjust to risks produced by other actors.

The consideration of equity in adaptation responses remains uneven. In a systematic review of 1,682 empirical studies, Araos et al. (2021) found that equity was frequently associated with the participation of marginalized groups or their identification as intended beneficiaries of interventions. The analysis nevertheless revealed important variations across regions and sectors and showed that simply mentioning vulnerable groups provides insufficient evidence of the redistribution of power, risks and benefits. The authors also warn that technically effective measures may deepen inequalities when their social effects remain outside planning and evaluation processes (Araos et al., 2021).

In the field of water, political ecology provides a basis for understanding that urban flows are shaped by more than hydrological conditions. Swyngedouw (2004) showed that networks, technologies, tariffs, institutions and territorial decisions participate in the social production of water and the distribution of urban power. Through the concept of the hydrosocial cycle, Linton and Budds (2014) extended this perspective by demonstrating that water and society are mutually constituted. Infrastructure can thus be understood as part of the processes that produce access, exclusion, value and differentiated ways of inhabiting the city rather than as a neutral technical support.

Territoriality adds a historical and political dimension to this interpretation. Territory encompasses more than the physical location of populations or the scale at which policies are implemented. It brings together relations of belonging, labor, memory, authority, care and the collective reproduction of life. Latin American political ecology has shown that the transformation of nature into a resource available for appropriation has been connected to coloniality, the subordination of peoples and knowledge systems and the imposition of development as a universal horizon (Leff, 2006; Alimonda, 2011; Escobar, 2018). This critique reveals that adaptation policies also intervene in ways of life and territorial relations, even when presented as strictly technical solutions.

The limits of institutional participation become particularly visible in relation to Indigenous Peoples and traditional communities. In a study of environmental and climate policies affecting a Brazilian traditional community, Iocca and Fidélis (2023) identified a stronger presence of these groups in policy diagnoses than in objectives, instruments and implementation measures. Formal recognition of vulnerability and traditional knowledge did not necessarily translate into influence over policy design or the substantive incorporation of territorial rights and distinct forms of social organization (Iocca and Fidélis, 2023).

The review conducted by Kasuri et al. (2026) extends this discussion to dominant water governance systems. Drawing on 226 articles and 183 case studies, the authors identified limited consideration of Indigenous knowledge and values in participatory processes and few assessments of the actual influence of participation on decision-making. The literature examined was concentrated in settler-colonial countries and at local scales, while Indigenous participation in international processes remained poorly documented. The study further shows that Indigenous Peoples are frequently treated as stakeholders without equivalent recognition of their rights, jurisdictions and authority over waters (Kasuri et al., 2026).

The concept of body-territory deepens the critique of institutional arrangements that separate environment, body and social life. Developed within community feminism, it demonstrates that territorial dispossession, contamination, care work and violence against racialized and gendered bodies belong to interconnected historical processes (Cabnal, 2010). Gay-Antaki (2025) brings this discussion into the field of climate governance and argues that separating body from territory restricts the capacity of States and multilateral regimes to recognize forms of violence produced by environmental exploitation. In relation to WASH, this perspective reveals how scarcity, intermittency and contamination simultaneously affect health, everyday domestic life, care, identity and continued presence in territories.

Indigenous, quilombola and counter-colonial perspectives deepen this shift by refusing the reduction of waters and territories to manageable resources. Kopenawa and Albert (2015) describe environmental destruction as the rupture of relations among human beings, rivers, forests, food, memory and spirituality. Bispo dos Santos (2015, 2023) contrasts the external logic of development with relations of involvement, belonging and reciprocity produced within territories. Krenak (2019, 2020, 2022), in turn, questions the utilitarian conception of nature and the notion of an abstract humanity uniformly subjected to ecological crisis. These formulations provide a basis for understanding water and sanitation as material and political relations rather than solely as service-delivery sectors.

The dialogue among these fields provides the basis for the concept of negotiable sustainability. The concept designates a rationality in which socio-environmental crisis becomes more readily recognizable when it can be translated into commitments, targets, indicators, financeable projects and reportable outcomes. This translation has institutional capacity because it mobilizes resources, organizes responsibilities and enables the monitoring of implementation. Its limits emerge when the criteria of negotiation and measurement come to determine what deserves recognition, subordinating dimensions less readily accommodated by this grammar, including care, memory, self-determination, everyday contamination and territorial permanence.

The same literature provides the foundations for understanding WASH as relational infrastructure. The hydrosocial cycle demonstrates the coproduction of water, society and technology. Environmental justice reveals the inseparability of distribution, recognition and participation. Territorial and counter-colonial perspectives demonstrate that bodies, waters and territories do not constitute independent domains. In this literature review, relational infrastructure is developed as a framework capable of connecting networks and systems to the social, institutional, bodily and territorial relations that sustain or precarize urban life.

The literature reviewed has demonstrated that incorporating water and sanitation into climate governance can strengthen their political priority and expand opportunities for financing and implementation. It has also shown that equity, participation and territorial recognition remain unevenly incorporated. Analyses of the regimes of visibility that determine which dimensions of WASH become recognizable as climate action, and of the consequences of this selection for territories historically subjected to environmental injustice, nevertheless remain insufficient. Building on this gap, the following section presents the theoretical-analytical approach adopted to interpret the documents and instruments associated with the post-COP30 climate agenda.

3 Theoretical-analytical approach

This article develops a conceptual, document-based theoretical-analytical essay aimed at interpreting the ways in which drinking water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH), including wastewater management within the sanitation service chain, are incorporated into climate governance in the COP30 cycle. The approach connects the conceptual framework presented in the Literature Review with an interpretive analysis of documents that structure commitments, instruments and discourses concerning adaptation, finance, infrastructure, participation and climate implementation.

The document selection was purposive and guided by three criteria. These comprised the document's direct relationship to the research question, its position within the international architecture of climate action and the presence of formulations related to WASH, adaptation, finance, measurement, infrastructure, inequalities or territoriality. The temporal scope covers the period from 2015 to 2026. The Paris Agreement provides the initial institutional benchmark, while documents produced between 2025 and 2026 enable an examination of the commitments, outcomes and disputes associated with the COP30 cycle.

The first part of the corpus comprises documents that define the institutional architecture of climate governance. The analysis included the Paris Agreement and the report Nationally Determined Contributions under the Paris Agreement. Synthesis Report by the Secretariat, identified as FCCC/PA/CMA/2025/8. The report provides an aggregated synthesis of 64 new nationally determined contributions submitted between January 2024 and September 2025. The analysis focused on the presence of adaptation, water resources, WASH, financial needs and implementation strategies within the set synthesized by the UNFCCC. Individual national contributions and differences among countries remained outside the scope of the study.

The architecture of the Enhanced Transparency Framework was examined through Decisions 18/CMA.1 and 5/CMA.3. The former establishes the modalities, procedures and guidelines for the monitoring arrangements provided for under Article 13 of the Paris Agreement. The latter defines common formats and guidance for communicating information on climate action, finance, technology transfer and capacity-building. The unit of analysis consisted of the institutional requirements for measurement and reporting. Country-level Biennial Transparency Reports were not included in the corpus.

The second part of the corpus comprises documents focused on implementation and finance within the COP30 cycle. The analysis included the Global Climate Action Agenda at COP30. Outcomes Report and the Baku to Belém Roadmap to 1.3T. The initiatives, commitments and Plans to Accelerate Solutions (PAS) described in the Action Agenda report were treated as internal units of analysis. These included actions related to water management, participatory governance, access to freshwater, water and sanitation security and resilient urban infrastructure. This organization made it possible to connect the broader frameworks of climate governance with the specific mechanisms through which WASH is formulated as a commitment, project, financial need and implementation outcome.

The third part comprises two international WASH monitoring documents. The report Progress on Household Drinking Water, Sanitation and Hygiene 2000–2024. Special Focus on Inequalities was used to examine the measurement of service access, safety and inequalities. The report State of Systems for Drinking Water, Sanitation and Hygiene. Global Update 2025 made it possible to incorporate policies, national targets, institutional arrangements, regulation, human resources, finance, participation and system capacity. The first report was published in 2025. The second, although referring to the 2025 GLAAS cycle, was released in January 2026.

The Latin American perspective was operationalized through two complementary dimensions. At the theoretical level, the interpretation draws on contributions from Latin American political ecology, Indigenous thought, community feminism and the quilombola and counter-colonial formulations presented in the Literature Review. At the documentary level, the corpus included the NDC of the Indigenous Peoples of Brazil, prepared by the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil, and the Declaration of the Indigenous Peoples of the Amazon in Response to the Outcomes of COP30, formulated by organizations from the nine countries of the Amazon Basin. The first document presents Indigenous demands intended to influence Brazil's NDC and National Climate Plan. The second connects territorial rights, decision-making participation, direct finance, self-government and Indigenous knowledge systems to the outcomes of the conference.

The Indigenous documents were treated as situated political and epistemological interventions rather than as functional equivalents of UNFCCC instruments. Their distinct institutional status forms part of the analysis itself, as it allows the multilateral grammar of commitments, indicators, finance and implementation to be placed in relation to formulations that connect adaptation with territorial protection, self-determination, the political authority of Indigenous Peoples and the relationships among waters, bodies and ways of life. The scope of this perspective is limited to the selected Indigenous formulations and their dialogue with the Latin American theoretical framework.

The analysis was conducted in two stages. The first identified how the documents define water, sanitation, infrastructure, adaptation, vulnerability, resilience and implementation. The analysis recorded the problems prioritized, the subjects recognized, the territorial scales mobilized and the instruments proposed to translate climate commitments into action. References to targets, indicators, transparency procedures, financing mechanisms, replicable projects and reportable outcomes were also examined.

The second stage placed the documents in relation to one another in order to identify convergences, differences and tensions in their understandings of risk, participation, infrastructure, territory and climate solutions. The comparison examined how multilateral documents and international organizations structure the legibility of WASH and how Indigenous organizations formulate demands related to territorial protection, self-determination, direct access to finance, political participation and the recognition of their knowledge systems and distinct forms of governance.

The reading was guided by six interdependent dimensions. These included representations of water and sanitation, mechanisms of implementation, measurement and finance, conceptions of infrastructure and resilience, recognition of inequalities and political subjects and the treatment of participation and territoriality. The information was organized in a matrix that recorded, for each document, institutional authorship, nature and political function, central concepts, prioritized instruments, subjects mentioned and the relationships established among adaptation, infrastructure, inequality and territory.

Coding was conducted deductively on the basis of the six dimensions defined in the analytical framework. In each document, thematic units were identified concerning definitions of WASH, implementation instruments, forms of measurement and finance, conceptions of infrastructure and resilience, recognized subjects and the treatment of participation and territoriality. For each unit, the analysis recorded the formulation employed, the associated instruments, the subjects mentioned and the relationships established among adaptation, inequality and territory. The comparison focused on the presence, emphasis and connections established by these formulations across the corpus, without assigning quantitative significance to absences or producing frequencies beyond those reported in the documents themselves.

The complete list of sources, their institutional nature, inclusion criteria, units examined and analytical dimensions are presented in Supplementary Table 1, while Supplementary Table 2 provides the cross-document analytical matrix supporting the interpretive analysis. The matrix records the dominant documentary formulations identified across the corpus and supports the interpretation of institutional framings and logics developed in the following sections.

The interpretation was guided by the hypothesis that climate governance increases the visibility of WASH when water, sanitation and adaptation are translated into negotiable commitments, financeable projects, measurable targets and reportable outcomes. The concept of negotiable sustainability functions as an analytical key for understanding both the institutional capacity of this grammar and the political and epistemological limits produced by its predominance.

The engagement between the corpus and the conceptual framework enabled further development of the proposition of WASH as relational urban infrastructure. This formulation understands water and sanitation as material mediations among bodies, waters, territories, health, care, social inequalities, institutions and urban life. The concept connects the technical dimensions of networks and systems with the social and territorial relations that determine the distribution of protection, exposure and decision-making power over adaptation.

The analytical scope of the study is limited to the forms through which the international climate agenda is formulated, represented and legitimized in the selected documentary corpus. It does not constitute an empirical evaluation of policy implementation, infrastructure performance or territorial outcomes, nor does it compare implementation across countries. The results therefore concern the institutional framings, patterns of visibility, instruments and tensions identified in the documents examined.

4 Results

4.1 The visibility of WASH in post-COP30 climate governance

The documentary analysis identified an expansion of the climate visibility of water, sanitation and hygiene through four interconnected operations. WASH is incorporated into adaptation priorities, rendered measurable through monitoring mechanisms, organized as a field of projects and solutions and connected to climate finance flows. Together, these operations link the sector's political recognition to the capacity to formulate targets, demonstrate needs, mobilize resources and report outcomes.

The 2025 NDC synthesis report provides the first evidence of this movement. Among the 64 new contributions considered by the UNFCCC, 73% included a specific adaptation component, in which water resources appeared among the priority areas. Water-related legal and policy frameworks were mentioned by 33% of Parties as instruments for NDC implementation. Among the Parties that quantified their financial needs, 76% identified adaptation needs across sectors including agriculture, water resources, infrastructure, health, water, sanitation and hygiene. At this level, WASH gains visibility through its inclusion in sectoral priorities, national instruments and aggregated financing needs [UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change), 2025].

The Enhanced Transparency Framework adds a second operation. Decisions 18/CMA.1 and 5/CMA.3 structure the communication of information on progress toward NDCs, climate impacts, adaptation actions and financial, technological and institutional support. WASH enters this architecture through broader categories such as vulnerability, adaptation, sectoral policies, financial needs, support received and outcomes achieved. Its institutional presence therefore depends on translating water and sanitation conditions into information compatible with the monitoring and reporting formats established by the climate regime [UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change), 2018, 2021].

The COP30 Global Climate Action Agenda shifts the emphasis from commitment to implementation. The report organizes voluntary action into six axes, one of which concerns building the resilience of cities, infrastructure and water. Its activation cycle connects coordination, measurement, demonstration and the scaling up of solutions. In 2025, 189 initiatives reported results and progress through the NAZCA portal, 157 of these also reported on enhanced indicators for the first time, and 117 Plans to Accelerate Solutions (PAS) were submitted to address barriers related to capacity, partnerships, policy and finance (High-Level Champions for Climate Action, 2025).

The water-related internal units show how this broader model extends to WASH. The plans described in the report encompass water management, participatory governance, freshwater access for vulnerable communities and partnerships for water justice. The Madrid Commitment connects water security, sanitation and climate resilience to the objective of universalizing services capable of responding to climate risks and received support from more than 29 countries during COP30. The Plan to Accelerate Resilient Urban Infrastructure further emphasizes portfolio development and capital mobilization, including clean water among the sectors covered by its financial instrument. Within this framework, water and sanitation become visible as resilient services, scalable solutions and investment opportunities (High-Level Champions for Climate Action, 2025).

The Baku to Belém Roadmap consolidates the financial dimension of this architecture. The document establishes the goal of mobilizing at least USD 1.3 trillion annually by 2035 to support developing countries in implementing their NDCs and national adaptation plans. Grants, concessional finance, instruments designed to avoid additional debt and measures to expand fiscal space form part of the proposed mobilization mechanisms. Water appears among the sectors associated with adaptation and resilience, alongside infrastructure, agriculture and health. Sanitation gains access to this financial architecture through its incorporation into NDCs, adaptation plans and resilient development portfolios (COP29 and COP30 Presidencies, 2025).

WHO and UNICEF documents complement this architecture by providing the foundations for WASH measurement and sectoral organization. The Joint Monitoring Programme structures the visibility of access through criteria related to coverage, availability, quality, safety and inequality. The GLAAS report extends the focus to policies, planning, regulation, human resources, participation, finance and system resilience. This combination makes it possible to connect access deficits with the institutional capacities required to respond to climate risks [WHO (World Health Organization) and UNICEF (United Nations Children's Fund), 2025, 2026].

The GLAAS findings show that the convergence between WASH and climate has already reached sectoral policies and strategies. Among the countries responding to the relevant questions, 80% reported that their WASH policies and plans addressed risks associated with climate variability and change, while 73% incorporated the climate resilience of technologies and management systems. Progress in the financial dimension was more limited. Among 94 responding countries, 60% had applied for external climate finance for WASH, of which 63% obtained funding, totaling USD 2.3 billion. The report also identified a gap between the provision of measures for disproportionately affected populations, the monitoring of those measures and the effective allocation of resources [WHO (World Health Organization) and UNICEF (United Nations Children's Fund), 2026].

Comparison across the corpus reveals an institutional chain formed by the sectoral incorporation of WASH, its codification into monitoring categories, its conversion into plans and projects and its connection to financing mechanisms (Table 1).

Table 1. WASH visibility operations identified in the documentary corpus.

Source. Author's own elaboration.

Across the corpus, the articulation of these operations renders WASH an increasingly visible object of climate governance. NDCs confer political and sectoral recognition, the Enhanced Transparency Framework structures the demonstration of progress, the Action Agenda organizes solutions and partnerships, the financial roadmap connects priorities with sources of funding and WHO and UNICEF reports provide indicators of access and institutional capacity. Visibility therefore results from the connection among commitment, measurement, project development, finance and implementation.

This incorporation varies across the components of WASH. Water occupies the broadest position, linked to water resources management, water security, adaptation and the resilience of cities and infrastructure. Sanitation gains greater prominence when associated with universal access, health, service continuity and investment needs. Hygiene appears primarily in monitoring systems and in measures directed toward specific population groups. The post-COP30 architecture expands the presence of WASH while distributing this visibility unevenly across its components.

The central result is the identification of an institutional grammar through which water and sanitation are translated into commitments, indicators, solutions, portfolios and financial needs. This grammar structures institutional conditions for implementation while simultaneously defining the terms through which WASH becomes recognizable as climate action. The following subsection examines the social, bodily and territorial dimensions that occupy less central positions within this regime of visibility and develops the formulation of WASH as relational urban infrastructure.

4.2 The limits of negotiable sustainability and the formulation of WASH as relational urban infrastructure

The institutional chain identified in the previous subsection expands the climate visibility of WASH through commitments, indicators, projects, finance and reportable outcomes. The documentary comparison showed that this visibility also entails a process of selection. Across the multilateral documents examined, dimensions that can circulate across planning, measurement and implementation receive greater structural emphasis, while territorial authority, self-determination, distinct forms of governance and control over resources occupy less central positions.

In multilateral and sectoral documents, inequalities appear primarily as differences in access, exposure, institutional capacity and vulnerability. Populations and territories are identified as priority recipients of policies, investments or adaptation measures. Participation forms part of governance arrangements and the conditions for implementing solutions, but it is frequently framed in terms of stakeholder inclusion, partnership-building and initiative delivery. The COP30 Action Agenda organizes participation through an architecture comprising governments, businesses, financial institutions, cities, civil society organizations and communities, oriented toward accelerating and scaling up solutions.

Gender appears in the corpus through three main framings. The 2025 NDC synthesis report records the growing incorporation of gender-responsive actions and presents women simultaneously as a vulnerable group and as agents of climate action. The Baku to Belém Roadmap connects their differentiated exposure to responsibilities related to water collection and care work, while also recognizing legal, financial and institutional barriers to accessing resources. In GLAAS, formal recognition of women's participation coexists with more limited levels of effective influence over water supply decisions. The corpus therefore incorporates gender as a dimension of vulnerability, participation and finance, but gives less attention to the relationships among the sexual division of labor, the everyday functioning of services and power over WASH decision-making [UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change), 2015; COP29 and COP30 Presidencies, 2025].

The NDC of the Indigenous Peoples of Brazil changes the position assigned to subjects and territories within this architecture. It is a political document prepared by the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil to influence Brazil's NDC and National Climate Plan, rather than a nationally determined contribution formally submitted by the State. Its demands are organized into seven axes encompassing territorial demarcation and protection, adaptation grounded in ways of life and traditional forms of governance, a just transition, direct access to finance, political participation, recognition of Indigenous knowledge and integration across climate, biodiversity, desertification and oceans. Territorial and Environmental Management Plans are presented as climate adaptation instruments connected to national planning [APIB (Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil), 2025].

In this document, territory extends beyond the location of vulnerabilities or the scale of implementation. Its protection is formulated as climate policy, a condition of adaptation and a basis for the continuity of ways of life and distinct forms of government. Climate action therefore comes to include territorial security, the capacity for self-determination and control over processes that affect the material and political conditions of existence. Adaptation acquires a territorial dimension that exceeds the technical adjustment of services and systems to projected risks [APIB (Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil), 2025].

The Declaration of the Indigenous Peoples of the Amazon in Response to the Outcomes of COP30 deepens this shift. The document acknowledges references to territorial rights and Indigenous knowledge in conference texts but points to their weak translation into operational provisions. The declaration demands the effective protection of territories, particularly those inhabited by Indigenous Peoples in isolation and initial contact, as both an obligation and a climate policy. Institutional recognition of rights is therefore assessed according to its capacity to produce legal security, territorial protection and prevention of extractive threats [COICA (Coordinating Body of Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon Basin), 2025].

Finance constitutes another point of differentiation. The Baku to Belém Roadmap and the Action Agenda emphasize resource mobilization, portfolio development, project preparation and the expansion of financial flows for implementation. The Indigenous documents add questions concerning access, control and the conditions under which these resources are used. The Indigenous NDC calls for direct and proportional access to climate finance. The Amazon declaration demands flexible and culturally appropriate mechanisms, social and environmental safeguards and management capacity through Indigenous organizations and their own financial structures [APIB (Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil), 2025; COICA (Coordinating Body of Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon Basin), 2025].

This difference changes the meaning of financial availability itself. Within the predominant grammar, finance enables priorities to be converted into implementable projects. In Indigenous formulations, its legitimacy also depends on the distribution of power over resources, respect for distinct forms of government and the protection of territorial rights. The volume of resources mobilized and the capacity to structure projects remain relevant, but they are accompanied by questions concerning who accesses, manages and determines the purposes of finance.

Participation undergoes a similar shift. The Amazon declaration records an unprecedented Indigenous presence at COP30 while distinguishing that presence from the effective exercise of participation. Decision-making capacity is associated with timely access to information, direct engagement in negotiating spaces, the inclusion of Indigenous negotiators in delegations and recognition of their own governance structures. Participation therefore extends beyond integration into institutional spaces to encompass the power to influence priorities, instruments and decisions [COICA (Coordinating Body of Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon Basin), 2025].

Knowledge systems are also treated differently. The Amazon declaration presents them as integrated relations among territories, lands, waters, governance and spirituality. Their recognition requires preserving these connections rather than fragmenting them into technical components that can be incorporated into adaptation projects. Water is embedded in territorial systems of knowledge, authority and the reproduction of life, acquiring a broader meaning than its representation as a resource, risk or investment sector [COICA (Coordinating Body of Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon Basin), 2025].

The selected Indigenous documents are not sectoral plans for water supply, sanitation or hygiene. Their role in the corpus is to provide a political and epistemological counterpoint to the ways in which climate governance organizes the visibility of WASH. By reinscribing water, adaptation and finance within relations of territory, rights, self-government and knowledge, these documents make it possible to identify dimensions that sectoral and multilateral arrangements incorporate only partially. The comparison revealed five main shifts between the predominant institutional grammar and the Indigenous formulations examined (Table 2).

Table 2. Shifts identified in the documentary comparison.

Source. Author's own elaboration.

These shifts make it possible to characterize negotiable sustainability as a specific mode of organizing climate visibility. Within this rationality, socio-environmental problems gain recognition to the extent that they can be converted into commitments, indicators, financeable projects, scalable solutions and comparable outcomes. This translation organizes institutional mechanisms intended to coordinate actors, mobilize resources and enable monitoring. Its predominance concentrates attention on the dimensions most compatible with these operations.

Negotiable sustainability therefore produces a conditioned form of visibility. Water gains prominence as a strategic resource, a priority area for adaptation and a component of resilient infrastructure. Sanitation becomes recognizable through universalization targets, service safety, health and investment needs. Hygiene circulates mainly through access indicators and its association with specific population groups. Territorial relations, political authority, the everyday labor required to sustain services and collective forms of producing water and sanitation security are less compatible with prevailing formats of project development, measurement and reporting.

The documentary comparison leads to the formulation of WASH as relational urban infrastructure. Water supply networks, sanitation facilities, collection and treatment systems, water sources, urban rivers and hygiene practices mediate relations among institutions, waters, bodies, health, care, social inequalities and territories. Their materiality distributes access, exposure and protection while also expressing decisions concerning priorities, investment, technologies and forms of participation.

This formulation broadens the understanding of climate infrastructure. The physical robustness of systems remains fundamental, but its assessment must also encompass service continuity and quality, affordability, the territorial distribution of protection and the capacity of affected subjects to influence decisions. Adaptation therefore involves both the technical conditions of system operation and the political relations through which risks, resources and responsibilities are distributed.

WASH as relational urban infrastructure constitutes the conceptual result produced through the articulation of the institutional patterns and tensions identified in the corpus. The concept preserves the importance of targets, indicators, finance and operational capacity while situating these elements within broader relations of territory, rights, health and decision-making power. The following section discusses this result in light of debates on environmental justice, the hydrosocial cycle, territoriality and body-territory.

5 Discussion

The results support the argument that the incorporation of WASH into post-COP30 climate governance occurs through a grammar of negotiable sustainability. Water, sanitation and hygiene gain greater visibility when they can be converted into national commitments, adaptation priorities, indicators, financeable projects, scalable solutions and reportable outcomes. This translation provides instruments for mobilizing resources and monitoring implementation, while also conditioning institutional recognition on the capacity to frame needs, territories and subjects within the prevailing formats of climate governance.

As conceptualized here, negotiable sustainability constitutes more than a process of technical selection. It describes a political rationality through which the boundaries of negotiation, priority and legitimate intervention can be examined. Within the documentary corpus, conflicts over water distribution, sanitation precarity, environmental racism and territorial appropriation tend to be translated into the language of risks, investment gaps, institutional capacities and project portfolios. Inequalities remain visible, but are predominantly represented as barriers to implementation or deficits to be managed.

This operation helps explain why water occupies a broader position in the corpus than sanitation and hygiene. Water can be presented as a strategic resource, an element of climate security, an economic input and a component of urban resilience. This flexibility allows it to connect with multiple agendas, sectors and financial flows. Sanitation and hygiene more directly expose excreta, contamination, intimacy, domestic labor, illness and territorial abandonment. Their materiality reveals social and bodily relations that resist being framed as climate assets or scalable projects.

In this respect, the findings extend the analysis of Altemus Cullen et al. (2025), who identified stronger integration of water with water resources management and resilience than with human rights and water justice. The difference observed here extends beyond the unequal distribution of attention across themes. It reveals that certain formulations are more compatible with the climate regime. Water security, resilient infrastructure and risk reduction can be connected to targets, indicators and investment. Everyday intermittency, persistent contamination, affordability and care work challenge the social organization of services itself and therefore require engagement with distributive conflicts and power relations.

Negotiable sustainability thus turns visibility into a political condition. Problems that become measurable, financeable and reportable acquire greater possibilities for intervention. Those that depend on recognizing territorial experiences, racialized inequalities and relations that cannot be reduced to sectors remain fragmented. The critique is directed less at the existence of targets and indicators than at the power these instruments acquire to define the universe of recognizable needs.

This process can be interpreted through Latin American political ecology. Leff (2006) situates the environmental crisis within a crisis of the rationalities that organize knowledge and the appropriation of nature. Alimonda (2011) shows that this rationality has a colonial history grounded in the transformation of territories and populations into spaces of exploitation. Escobar (2018) demonstrates that the separation between society and nature sustains a specific ontology presented as universal despite its historical origins. Read through Latin American political ecology, the documentary patterns identified here suggest that climate governance can reproduce these separations by organizing water, bodies, infrastructure and territory as distinct units of planning and finance.

The conversion of crisis into negotiable objects can also produce depoliticization. Sanitation deficits appear as financial gaps, territorial vulnerabilities become quantifiable risks and communities are represented as beneficiaries or stakeholders. Conflicts over who controls water, where sewage is discharged, which territories receive investment and which populations bear the costs of adaptation lose centrality. Negotiable sustainability can therefore incorporate inequality into the climate regime without necessarily confronting the relations through which such inequalities are produced.

This tension shapes the relationship among SDG 6, Clean Water and Sanitation, SDG 11, Sustainable Cities and Communities, and SDG 13, Climate Action. The convergence of these three goals allows WASH to be recognized simultaneously as an essential service, urban infrastructure and a component of adaptation. Yet alignment among targets can generate administrative coherence without distributive transformation. A city may expand resilient infrastructure while maintaining intermittent services in peripheral areas. It may improve average coverage indicators while preserving contaminated water, unaffordable tariffs and shared facilities. It may reduce risks in highly valued areas while transferring sewage overflows, waste and insecurity to other territories.

Integrating the SDGs therefore requires examining the conflicts concealed by aggregate outcomes. The issue extends beyond adding indicators. It concerns which experiences are converted into evidence, which inequalities guide the distribution of resources and who has the power to define the meaning of a sustainable and climate-resilient city. Without this shift, the articulation among the SDGs may reinforce negotiable sustainability by reducing justice to alignment among targets.

The Indigenous documents examined make the limits of this rationality more visible. The NDC of the Indigenous Peoples of Brazil and the Declaration of the Indigenous Peoples of the Amazon reject the position of vulnerable beneficiaries and claim authority over territories, policies and resources. Their contrast with the multilateral grammar involves more than different demands for participation. It expresses a dispute over who may define the climate problem, which forms of knowledge possess legitimacy and which relations should be protected.

Iocca and Fidélis (2023) found that traditional communities appear more frequently in policy diagnoses than in policy objectives and instruments. Kasuri et al. (2026) show that Indigenous Peoples are often incorporated into water governance as stakeholders without equivalent recognition of their rights and jurisdictions. Taken together with the documentary patterns identified in this study, these findings suggest that inclusion may function as a form of political containment when vulnerability is recognized without a corresponding redistribution of authority over priorities, finance and the selection of solutions.

The distinction between participation and authority is decisive. Consultation, representation and presence at conferences may increase institutional legitimacy without changing the distribution of power. Schlosberg (2007) connects distributive, procedural and recognition-based justice, while Newell et al. (2021) emphasize that transformative responses must confront the structures that produce vulnerability. Indigenous formulations advance this debate by linking participation to self-determination, self-government and territorial control. Recognition shifts from inclusion in policies defined by others to the power to define policy itself.

In this confrontation, territory assumes a meaning incompatible with its reduction to a scale of implementation. Kopenawa and Albert (2015) show that forests, waters, food, human and non-human beings form relations whose disruption threatens the continuity of life. Krenak (2019, 2020, 2022) questions the conception of nature as an available external domain and the notion of an abstract humanity uniformly affected by ecological crisis. By distinguishing development from involvement, Bispo dos Santos (2015, 2023) highlights the opposition between external appropriation and territorial belonging.

These contributions show that negotiable sustainability also operates through epistemological asymmetries. By converting territories into areas of intervention, knowledge into inputs and peoples into participants, it may incorporate elements considered useful to policy without recognizing the relations that give them meaning. Indigenous knowledge becomes valued for its contribution to adaptation, while Indigenous authority to decide over lands, waters and resources remains conditioned by State and multilateral institutions. Knowledge can therefore be incorporated without redistributing power.

Finance reveals the geopolitical dimension of negotiable sustainability. The Baku to Belém Roadmap situates the expansion of climate resources against the growing needs of developing countries, their limited fiscal space and the risks associated with indebtedness, while also acknowledging political and fiscal constraints on the stable provision of resources by developed countries. Climate finance is therefore negotiated within an architecture marked by unequal historical responsibilities, different capital costs and highly uneven capacities to convert needs into financeable projects (COP29 and COP30 Presidencies, 2025).

The emphasis on portfolios, risk reduction and capital mobilization may favor institutions and territories capable of presenting projects according to externally defined technical and financial criteria. Expanded finance may therefore coexist with dependence on intermediaries, new financial obligations and unequal resource distribution. Indigenous demands for direct access, self-management and territorial safeguards shift the discussion from the volume of resources mobilized to the power to decide how they are used. Financial justice depends both on resource availability and on the political relations produced through access mechanisms.

The documentary treatment of gender confirms the selectivity of negotiable sustainability. Women are recognized through their differentiated exposure, their participation in climate action and the barriers they face in accessing finance, while the everyday labor through which they compensate for service failures receives less attention. The concept of body-territory helps interpret this limit by connecting territorial dispossession with violence affecting racialized and gendered bodies (Cabnal, 2010). In WASH, contaminated water, sewage overflows and supply interruptions reorganize hygiene, food, sleep, mobility and care. Infrastructure distributes services and risks, as well as time and responsibilities among the State, service providers and households. This distribution disproportionately affects women and girls, who assume responsibility for obtaining and treating water at home, cleaning contaminated environments and caring for people who become ill (Tandon et al., 2024; Abdulhadi et al., 2024; Gay-Antaki, 2025).

The formulation of WASH as relational urban infrastructure emerges from this critique. The concept expands the meaning of resilient infrastructure and challenges the fragmentation through which networks, bodies, waters, waste and territories are treated as independent objects. Swyngedouw (2004) and Linton and Budds (2014) demonstrate that water, technology, society and power are co-produced. Relational infrastructure extends this field by incorporating sanitation, wastewater, hygiene, contamination and care.

Relational infrastructure accommodates different technological configurations. Centralized systems, decentralized solutions, nature-based technologies and ecological sanitation alternatives may contribute to adaptation under distinct territorial conditions. Their adequacy depends on their capacity to ensure sanitary safety, continuity, affordability, sustained operation and an equitable distribution of protection. Technological choice is therefore simultaneously a technical, social and territorial decision whose outcomes must be assessed beyond the physical robustness of assets (Hyde-Smith et al., 2022; Ferdowsi et al., 2024; Becher et al., 2024).

This perspective requires asking who receives water, who lives with its absence, where sewage is conveyed, which territories concentrate risks and who controls decisions. Technical robustness alone does not establish distributive justice: an intervention may reduce aggregate risk while shifting environmental, service or financial burdens across territories and social groups. Such distributive effects are therefore central to assessing whether adaptation expands protection or reproduces existing inequalities (Schlosberg, 2007; Araos et al., 2021).

These findings have practical implications for water governance, public policy and urban climate adaptation. Challenging the limits of negotiable sustainability requires changing the criteria through which policies and projects become eligible, financeable and assessable. In monitoring, coverage and availability should be combined with service continuity, quality, affordability, frequency of interruptions, exposure to contamination and territorially disaggregated inequalities. In climate finance, assessment should consider not only the volume of resources mobilized but also their territorial distribution, social and environmental safeguards, effects on tariffs and indebtedness, and the conditions under which local governments and affected communities can access and influence their allocation. In urban water planning, participation should extend beyond consultation to problem definition, technological choice and resource prioritization.

For climate adaptation, this framework also changes what counts as performance. The robustness of physical assets and the volume of investment remain relevant, but they are insufficient indicators of an equitable adaptation outcome. Assessment should also examine whether interventions maintain safe and continuous services under climatic stress, reduce differentiated exposure to contamination and service failure, expand protection in historically underserved territories and avoid transferring environmental and financial risks to other populations or places. Relational urban infrastructure can therefore operate as an analytical and planning reference for distinguishing interventions that expand adaptive capacity from those that reproduce or redistribute vulnerability.

Negotiable sustainability remains the center of the argument because it explains how the sanitation crisis becomes governable and which dimensions are subordinated in that process. Relational urban infrastructure responds to these limits by relocating targets, resources and technologies within the historical relations that distribute services, risks and power. The post-COP30 challenge lies in contesting the terms of WASH's presence within the climate agenda so that expanded implementation corresponds to a redistribution of protection and decision-making power.

6 Concluding remarks

This article examined the terms through which WASH enters climate governance in the COP30 cycle. The documentary analysis indicates that water, sanitation and hygiene gain institutional visibility when translated into commitments, indicators, projects, financial needs and reportable outcomes. This incorporation is organized through instruments that assign responsibilities and structure possibilities for implementation, while subordinating recognition of the sanitation crisis to prevailing formats of planning, measurement and finance.

Negotiable sustainability constitutes the explanatory axis of this process. Its institutional capacity lies in organizing commitments, instruments and resource-mobilization mechanisms, while its selectivity concentrates attention on the dimensions most compatible with targets, investment and the comparison of outcomes. The engagement with Indigenous formulations showed that climate justice also involves territorial authority, self-determination, decision-making participation, control over resources and recognition of the relationships among waters, knowledge systems and ways of life. The incorporation of WASH into the climate agenda therefore depends on the political and epistemological terms that define who receives protection and who participates in shaping it.

The proposition of WASH as relational urban infrastructure synthesizes the study's conceptual contribution. Within the relational infrastructure framework proposed here, networks, treatment systems, sanitation facilities, rivers and hygiene practices are understood as mediating the distribution of services, risks, care and power across bodies and territories. Climate adaptation in WASH should connect technical performance, continuity, quality, affordability, the territorial distribution of protection and decision-making capacity. The post-COP30 challenge is to translate expanded institutional visibility into more equitable implementation by directing climate action toward reducing sanitation and territorial inequalities and broadening the distribution of protection and decision-making power.

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Supplementary material

The Supplementary Material for this article can be found online at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frsc.2026.1903898/full#supplementary-material

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Footnotes

Edited by: Vanessa Victor da Cruz de Souza, University of São Paulo, Brazil

Reviewed by: Taiwo Temitope Bamgboye, University of Oulu, Finland

Medali Cueva Rodríguez, Universidad Nacional de Cajamarca, Peru