Background

As the climate crisis deepens, humanitarian actors - from donors to humanitarian organizations to local volunteers - are faced with a collective responsibility to ensure that their work does not further contribute to deteriorating the environment people live in and ultimately their health, well-being and individual resilience. This Priority Topic will showcase a number of initiatives from a multitude of stakeholders focusing on reducing the climate and environmental footprint of humanitarian action, implementing best practices in terms of Nature-based Solutions as well as avenues for mitigating conflicts driven or exacerbated by the effect of the climate crisis.

Expected outcomes:

• Clarify what is meant by greening and how it interlinks with adaptation and resilience 
• Identify and discuss opportunities to implement a greener response and as well as how we solve some of the structural and administrative hurdles.  
• Present the outcomes of projects on climate change adaptations in humanitarian hotspots, initiatives on Nature-based Solutions and on the Climate and Environment Charter for humanitarian organizations, to name a few. 

Climate Crisis at the HNPW

The priority topic "Climate Crisis" was introduced at the HNPW 2020. At the HNPW 2021 more than 1400 participants attended nine sessions with a focus on greening humanitarian action, including a session on Inclusion and Climate.

Sessions included workshops with donors and other actors to coordinate support and prepare for system-wide engagement, and to present the climate and environment charter developed by IFRC and ICRC with currently 160 supporting organizations. Another session looked at nature-based solutions.

Throughout 2021 all partners continued working to implement the outcomes and recommendations of these sessions. ECHO has developed minimum environmental requirements, which are currently shared with partners for comments.

The Global Logistics and Shelter Clusters and other actors are looking at reducing plastic and waste in the supply chain. Related activities are coordinated by EHAN in quarterly meetings.