UNOCHA Pre-Conference Workshop – 2023

Background

With a different theme for DIHAD every year, it was agreed that a pre-DIHAD workshop would be organized in alignment with the main theme of the Conference to introduce participants to the topic from the perspective of the multilateral humanitarian system. As this year’s theme of DIHAD 2023: “Energy and Aid; capitalising on available resources”. With a focus on a number of topics including addressing the topic: “The impact of rapidly changing sources and costs of energy on humanitarian aid and development”.

This 19th edition of the pre-DIHAD workshop aims to discuss the “Climate Change: Time to Scale up Anticipatory Humanitarian Action” by bringing technical experts to share their experiences and lessons learned with the group of professional participants who would be interested in expanding their knowledge and engage in the discussion.

Thematic Overview

The Global Humanitarian Overview 2021 estimates that 235 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance, with 160 million targeted for assistance in over 30 countries. This annual estimate is based on needs assessments that take place in humanitarian crises during the year, an often-challenging process that takes account of multiple sectors. Although Humanitarian Needs Overviews increasingly include scenarios and projections for potential shocks and hazards, the coexistence, correlation, and causality of needs is difficult to capture in complex humanitarian crises.

Half of the world’s population, up to 3.6 billion people already live in contexts highly vulnerable to climate change. By 2050, virtually every child on Earth – over 2 billion children – is forecast to face more frequent heatwaves and more people are now forced from their homes by extreme weather than by war.

Climate change is already driving major new emergency needs, stretching the humanitarian system to breaking point. The number of people impacted by climate-related disasters doubled in the first two decades of this century. As the planet warms, the gap between these growing needs and the resources available to build resilience and support emergency response (already at over $30 billion for this year) will continue to grow. Climate finance has the potential to help fill this gap, but it is not reaching the most vulnerable people and communities at either the scale or speed required.

The regional, national and local disaster management structures and international humanitarian systems will not be able to cope with the challenges posed by increased, prolonged and interacting climate-related disasters. In 103 countries, extreme heat accounted for an estimated 98 million more people reporting moderate to severe food insecurity in 2020 than the average number of people in 1981–2010. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, people who live in a climate crisis hotspot in the global south are 15 times more likely to die from a climate disaster.

The most vulnerable populations, such as elderly, women, children and people living in slums or rural areas, will be most affected, yet rich and poor countries alike are affected by climate change. It is worth noting that the G20 countries account for 80 per cent of global emissions. While developed nations agreed to provide $100 billion per year to help developing countries mitigate and adapt to climate change. This target has not been met. It reached only around $80 billion in 2019, mostly in the form of loans.

Financing of humanitarian assistance may decrease as traditional donors direct more resources towards adaptation to extreme weather in their own countries. Anticipatory financing and financing linked to the Loss and Damage workstream of the UNFCCC could address this gap but demands active engagement from the humanitarian system.

We all bear the brunt of inaction, while there is still hope, the UN and Partners need to rapidly engage in climate action, and adapt at several levels, including policy, advocacy, mitigation, preparedness/ readiness and early action. Our collective experience shows that we need to massively scale up investment in anticipatory approaches, and better engage the private sector to ensure access to early action for all.

Session 1: What does Climate Action Mean and Why Anticipatory Humanitarian Action?

• What it means: Anticipatory action is defined as “acting ahead of predicted hazards to prevent or reduce acute humanitarian impacts before they fully unfold”. An anticipatory action is an approach to disaster risk management that is rapidly gaining traction around the world to invest in protecting people from the impacts of hazards, rather than waiting for the worst to happen and then responding.
• Components of Anticipatory Action: forecasting and risk information; planning; financing; and delivery. Examples from the region of the current state of each of these components.

Session 2: Progress and Achievements in Adaptation, Mitigation and Preparedness

• Adaptation and Vulnerability: Climate adaptation failure. Progress in planning, financing and implementing adaptation actions.
• Good Practices: Increasing global resilience to systemic risk: emerging lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Instruments Implemented to prioritize disadvantaged groups: Traditional Knowledge has helped communities use their available resources to mitigate disasters and build resilience.
• Refugees and Displaced People: What needs to be considered? a trauma-informed approach presents a promising way forward for assisting these populations in advance of extreme weather events and climate disasters.
• Women, Youth and Children: The Disproportionate impacts by Climate Change and disasters. Focused climate initiative designed to help countries address current and growing impacts of the climate crisis, and better cope with disasters

Session 3: Financing for Climate Humanitarian Action

• The Humanitarian Funding Gap: Anticipatory action programmes are linked to funding mechanisms through the anticipatory pillar of the IFRC’s Disaster Relief Emergency Fund (DREF), the United Nations’ Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF), and the Start Network’s Crisis Anticipation and Disaster Risk Financing.
• Assessment and Analysis: The Data Center is developing early warning systems and resilience trigger mechanisms to support OCHA’s anticipatory action pilots in over ten countries. (By including climate change and environment into INFORM and the Crisis Severity Index).
• Innovation for the future: CERF Anticipatory action activities investing in forecast-based financing to facilitate fast, coordinated and forward-looking response to climatic risks and by promoting enhanced coherence between humanitarian and climate/ development funding and Loss and Damage.
The innovative aspect combining pre-agreed financing with early warning triggered by weather information – Anticipatory action projects that are developed in about 70 countries. Recent examples include forecasted floods in Mali, Niger and Typhoon Noru in Viet Nam and latest example of anticipatory allocation from the CERF is the one in Nepal.
• Loss and Damage (L&D), the Major Outcomes of COP27: We need meaningful decisions, concrete actions and finance for Loss and Damage. Countries and communities are already experiencing losses and damages which will continue to increase.

Click here to register (882 AED)

Explore past pre-conference archives here.