Cooperation Collaboration and Participation In climate adaptation strategy, it is essential to ensure that actions taken by one group do not create risks for other groups. For example, if the inhabitants of one bank build a dike to prevent floodwaters from flooding their lands, they will cause the floodwaters to flood the lands on the other bank more heavily. In the face of rising incidence of flooding, a shared strategy will be necessary for the collaboration of all the riverine populations, on one side and the other, upstream and downstream, to soften floodwaters and minimize flood risks for all. Ensuring effective local participation in the design, development, and management of safe drinking water and sanitation services and facilitates is essential to achieve adaptation processes that effectively guarantee the human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation in the face of the risks arising from climate change. Participation is particularly important where socio-economic inequalities and issues of marginalisation are ignored in the management of safe drinking water and sanitation services so that these issues of discrimination are not reinforced by adaptation plans. Designing solutions for resilient safe drinking water and sanitation services depends to a large extent on matching them to the characteristics of the territory's aquatic ecosystems, and no one knows the territory better than its inhabitants. Examples of participatory approaches that protect the human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation in the face of climate change include: Taking into account the local knowledge, values and cultural cues of communities should govern participation in water and sanitation services, to ensure the acceptability of those services; Encouraging local participation in the design and development of water and sanitation services, as well as respect for municipal and community institutions, to ensure the necessary local and community responsibility in the management and maintenance of these services; Including the participation of groups with specific needs in designing adaptation solutions. For example, women's participation is essential in ensuring that their specific (often neglected) menstrual health needs are taken into account, and in their empowerment in the design and development of safe drinking water and sanitation projects as those who often bear the responsibility for fetching safe drinking water in many impoverished communities; Ensuring the participation of marginalized groups or population living in vulnerable locations, including the neighborhoods of peri-urban areas and informal settlements in large cities; Creating policies to plan for the impacts of climate change that include measures to address the disproportionate impact on groups in situations of vulnerability. While local participation is essential to protecting the human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation against climate change, the State is the primary duty-bearer. The scale of the impacts of climate change requires action beyond the capacity of purely local management. Ultimately, the obligation to guarantee the human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation for all, without discrimination of any kind, rests with the State. 8