This study examines the environmental impacts and eco-innovation implications of emergency Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) interventions in conflict-affected settings, focusing on Cabo Delgado Province in northern Mozambique. While such interventions are critical for disease prevention and service restoration, their cumulative environmental effects in fragile ecosystems remain underexplored. A mixed-methods approach was employed to assess impacts on groundwater resources, sanitation-related contamination, forest ecosystems, energy use, and solid waste generation. Data were collected through environmental field assessments, surveys, and interviews with humanitarian practitioners, government officials, and community members, focus group discussions with displaced populations, and document analysis. Fieldwork across five districts enabled comparative analysis across varied ecological and displacement contexts. Findings show that, despite improving access to safe water and sanitation, emergency WASH interventions generated environmental pressures. Intensive groundwater abstraction reduced borehole yields, poorly sited latrines increased contamination risks, and plastic-based hygiene kits contributed to persistent waste. Deforestation linked to fuel wood use and reliance on diesel-powered water trucking further exacerbated environmental stress. The study concludes that environmental outcomes are shaped by technological and governance factors and recommends integrating environmental safeguards and eco-innovative solutions to enhance sustainability and resilience. It recommends integrating environmental safeguards, hydrogeological assessments, and eco-innovative solutions such as solar-powered systems, community-led sanitation, and waste-reduction strategies into humanitarian WASH programming to enhance environmental sustainability and resilience in crisis-affected settings in Mozambique.

The study has several overarching conclusions emerge regarding emergency WASH programming and environmental sustainability in Cabo Delgado. First, emergency WASH interventions in conflict-affected contexts function as environmentally consequential systems rather than neutral responses. While effective in restoring life-saving services, their cumulative ecological footprint manifested through groundwater depletion, sanitation-related contamination, deforestation, and waste accumulation is substantial and measurable. These findings underscore that environmental considerations cannot be treated as secondary in humanitarian WASH programming without jeopardizing long-term recovery and resilience. Second, environmental degradation in emergency WASH is driven less by technical ignorance than by operational structures and governance constraints. Practices such as poorly sited latrines, uncontrolled water abstraction, and non-sustainable material use are embedded within humanitarian modalities that prioritize rapid deployment, standardization, and short-term outputs over environmental planning. This aligns with Political Ecology perspectives, illustrating that environmental outcomes are shaped by institutional priorities, power dynamics, and policy decisions rather than by technical limitations alone. Third, eco-innovative practices provide viable pathways to reduce the environmental footprint of emergency WASH interventions without compromising service delivery. Evidence from Cabo Delgado including solar-powered water systems, community-led sanitation initiatives, and reusable hygiene materials demonstrates that sustainability and emergency responsiveness can coexist. When supported by local governance structures and community participation, these approaches enhance ecological protection and system resilience, consistent with principles of Resilience Thinking. Fourth, embedding environmental sustainability into emergency WASH programming is fundamentally a governance challenge. Weak regulatory capacity, fragmented coordination, and limited oversight constrain the systematic adoption of sustainable practices. Nevertheless, the study shows that incremental institutional reforms such as environmental screening protocols, inter-agency coordination mechanisms, and district-level capacity building can significantly strengthen environmental accountability. Theoretical contributions of this research include advancing Political Ecology by empirically demonstrating how humanitarian WASH interventions redistribute environmental risks within fragile contexts, often impacting already vulnerable communities and ecosystems. Simultaneously, the study extends Resilience Thinking by illustrating how adaptive, locally grounded, and environmentally conscious practices can enhance socio-ecological resilience, even amid conflict and displacement. Overall, this study contributes to the emerging discourse on green humanitarianism by providing grounded empirical evidence from Cabo Delgado that environmentally responsible emergency WASH programming is both necessary and operationally feasible, highlighting practical and theoretical pathways for sustainable humanitarian action.

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