Nature-based Solutions in Humanitarian Contexts | Policy Dialogue

About this Event

Implementing Nature-based Solutions could reduce the number of people in need of international humanitarian assistance due to climate change and weather-related disasters… By 2030, 150 million people a year could need humanitarian assistance due to floods, droughts, and storms. By 2050, this is expected to rise to 200 million people annually.
Working with Nature to Protect People: How NbS Reduce Climate Change and Weather-Related Disasters, IFRC and WWF, 2022

In the coming decades growing disaster risk, driven in part by climate change and environmental degradation, threatens to exceed the humanitarian sector’s capacity to respond to crises. The increasing severity and frequency of climate-related disasters exacerbate underlying risks, stoke conflict, and undermine humanitarian and development gains.

Within these complex humanitarian response dynamics, the environment is often overlooked, not prioritized, or is treated as an afterthought. Yet the environment is fundamental to effective humanitarian action for two primary reasons:

• a degraded environment can trigger or worsen a humanitarian crisis; and,
• humanitarian operations can damage the environment, exacerbating underlying vulnerability and risk.

Nature-based Solutions (NbS) are a powerful tool for enhancing resilience, supporting sustainable development, and improving the quality of life of affected communities while safeguarding the livelihoods and ecosystems they depend upon. Nature-based Solutions can provide multiple benefits simultaneously relevant to humanitarian contexts and are one key approach not only for adapting to climate change but also for preventing loss and damage and sustainably managing natural resources.

Guidance on how to integrate NbS in humanitarian contexts can be found in the Sphere Unpacked Guide on Nature-based Solutions for Climate Resilience in Humanitarian Contexts.

The 28th United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Conference of the Parties (COP) in December, will hold for the first time ever a thematic day on “Relief, Recovery and Peace” (3 December) thus recognising the interlinkages between nature-climate-humanitarian crises. A key day to foster discussions on accelerating adaptation actions, preventing and addressing loss and damage, in both fragile and conflict-affected contexts.

Co-organised by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and the Geneva Environment Network, this event offered an opportunity to amplify common messaging on the interlinked nature-climate-humanitarian crises and the need of common narrative for tackling both climate emergency and humanitarian action.

As UN Secretary-General António Guterres pointed out in September 2020, “the climate emergency is a race we are losing, but it is a race we can win.”

Speakers

By order of intervention.

Nena STOILJKOVIC

Under Secretary General for Global Relations, Humanitarian Diplomacy and Digitalization, IFRC

Charles KARANGWA

Global Head, Nature-based Solutions, IUCN

Goutam Kumar DEY

Counselor, Permanent Mission of the People's Republic of Bangladesh to the United Nations Office and other international organizations in Geneva

Régis FARRET

Counselor Sustainable Development, Permanent Mission of France to the United Nations Office and other international organizations in Geneva

Andrew HARPER

Special Advisor on Climate Action to the High Commissioner for Refugees, UN High Commissioner for Refugees

Manuel MARQUES PEREIRA

Head of Division, Migration, Environment, Climate Change and Disaster Risk Reduction, IOM

Ninni IKKALA NYMAN

Lead for Climate and Resilience (a.i), IFRC | Moderator

Highlights

Video

Live on Webex

Live on Facebook

Photo Gallery

Documents

• Presentations made during the event
• IFRC’s Key Messages on Nature-based Solutions in Humanitarian Contexts (to be read with the technical backgrounder)

Links

• Nature-based Solutions | Geneva Environment Network
• Working With Nature to Protect People | IFRC & WWF | 2022
• Conflict and Natural Resources | UN Peace Keeping