COP27 Advocacy pack
The climate crisis is a humanitarian crisis. The most recent IPCC report highlights that human-induced climate change, including more frequent and intense extreme events, has caused widespread adverse impacts and related losses and damages to nature and people, beyond natural climate variability. This means more climate related hazards that affect the poorest parts of our world. According to the World Food Programme, 2022 is a year of unprecedented hunger, 828 million are hungry globally and 50 million people in 45 countries are on the edge of famine.
This advocacy pack is a collective effort with Start Network’s members and is for you to use it! How? Share it within your organisation, use our key messages, advocate for our policy asks, download the social media graphics available in English, Spanish and French, and disseminate our collective work.
Why should our network care?
As a global network of more than 80* local, national and international aid organisations focused on system change, we have a responsibility to advocate for change in one of our most pressed challenges, climate change.
(*provisional, pending completion of due diligence)
COP27 is taking place in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt from 6-18 November, and we believe humanitarian actors from all diverse backgrounds must raise their voice and make visible the immense impact that climate change is having in the humanitarian sector.
What should we know?
- More extreme hazards: Periods of extreme heat have become more frequent and intense, rainfall and other precipitation has increased, with more frequent and intense heavy precipitation. In Africa, four missing rain seasons led to a devastating drought and the decimation of livestock by up to 70 percent.
- Vulnerable ecological system: These extreme climatic events, coupled with other human activities, are disrupting the planet’s ecological systems and leading to a loss of biodiversity that is already impacting the livelihoods of people who depend on biological resources for food security and economic development.
- Food insecurity: Food security has been threatened by damage to crops and decreased crop yields resulting from a number of climatic factors, including increased drought in some areas. This has contributed to increased food insecurity. In the Horn of Africa, for example, more than 37 million people are facing acute hunger, with approximately seven million children under the age of five acutely malnourished in the region.
- Conflict and migration: Climate-driven movement of people is adding to a massive migration already under way to the world’s cities. The number of migrants has doubled globally over the past decade, and the issue of what to do about rapidly increasing populations of displaced people will only become greater and more urgent.
- Widening gender inequalities: Particularly for the most marginalised girls and young women who have contributed least to the climate crisis but are among the most affected. With girls facing the biggest effects for the longest time, the climate crisis is amongst the most significant intergenerational equity issue of our time. Research by the Malala Fund, for instance, estimated that climate-related events in 2021 would have prevented at least four million girls from completing their education in low-and middle-income countries.
Voices from our members:
Plan International shares its climate policy recommendations:
- Sign up to and implement the Declaration on Children, Youth and Climate Action
- Recognise the disproportionate impact of the climate crisis on children, especially girls and include measures to address this in updated Nationally Determined Contributions and National Adaptation Plans:
- Ensure national climate loss and damage data is disaggregated by gender, age, and disability, at a minimum. Institutionalise age and gender responsive risk assessments to inform, develop and monitor inclusive DRR and climate policies and programs. Importantly, governments should use this data to better inform climate policies and programs that strengthen the resilience of girls and other vulnerable groups.
- Explicitly incorporate child rights and intergenerational equity in Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), national adaptation plans (NAPs) and other climate strategies with specific actions to address age and gender considerations.
- Ensure NDCs, NAPs and other policies and programmes are informed by affected communities, Indigenous people and marginalised groups, and where appropriate, delivered by them.
- Ensure girls’ specific needs and experiences are recognised, reflected, and addressed in national and local climate policies, and actions are identified, tailored, and implemented to strengthen their resilience.
- Explicitly include approaches to prevent and respond to violence against girls and women and violence against children in NDCs and NAPs
World Jewish Relief shares some key learning after implementing a pilot climate resilience:
- Find the right funding structures for climate resilience programmes, including multi-year funding which guarantees stable staffing numbers and promote long term change in the livelihood of affecting communities.
- Make appropriate assessments before programme activities are designed. These include gender assessments, full CVCA (community vulnerability and capacity assessments), market analysis and others beyond humanitarian needs assessment.
- The importance of understanding and addressing underlying causes of vulnerability and exposure to climate-related shocks and stresses, e.g. barriers to owning land (caused by gender, caste, recent displacement, lack of citizenship or literacy).
- Societal change takes time and immediate results that some of our stakeholders as donors expect, are the exception and not the norm.
- Need for comprehensive M&E frameworks that measure the process, content and effectiveness of programmes.
“We need to better communicate with grant givers, institutional funders and stakeholders beyond the humanitarian sphere – many are providing grants for various climate change-related initiatives, but they typically prioritise programmes that focus on mitigation, or on benefits for the environment. We need to explain better that the funding gap now is for adaptation and resilience building.” World Jewish Relief
Messages from our local actors:
- ASECSA: Climate crisis in Guatemala; The effects of climate crisis in the communities
- CADENA: Climate crisis in Mexico; Loss lof lives and livelihoods
- Pro-Vida: Humanitarian responses on the ground
- Start Fund Nepal response to flooding:
We are advocating for:
The climate crisis is a humanitarian crisis, and nobody is immune to its effects. Regardless of one’s nationality, age, sex, education, location, job or ideology, the climate crisis is already impacting us. However, due to deeply rooted inequalities, the world's poorest are facing life-threatening challenges. Locally led anticipatory action can prevent and minimise the climate crisis, we must act together.
No more commitments are needed, action from power-holders is imperative.
- Devolve power to local responders in developing countries. Funding and decision-making power is needed at the local level, donors must action their Grand Bargain commitments. Local actors in the poorest parts of the world are the most affected by more severe and pronounced natural hazards including flooding, heatwaves and hurricanes, and consequently affecting already precarious food insecurity challenges and migration.
- Anticipatory action and pre-arranged disaster risk finance must be supported by scaled up funding as well as complemented and connected to wider risk management efforts within the climate, development, and humanitarian portfolios. Climate conditioning of risk models, where climate science is integrated into future simulations, is required given the challenges climate change poses for risk analysis and predicting the likelihood of future extreme events.
- Support and fund innovative ways of addressing the climate crisis. The use of forecast-based action, insurance mechanisms and community-based innovation, including indigenous wisdom, are underexplored locally led anticipatory action approaches that can provide more dignified aid and save more lives.
Adaptation, loss and damage, and resilience: Resources you can’t miss!
International:
- World Jewish Relief | The climate crisis is a humanitarian and Jewish issue (PDF)
- HelpAge International | A rising force for change: Older people and climate action (PDF)
- HelpAge International | Older People and Climate Action (PDF)
- Plan Canada | FROM THE FRONTLINES - Youth call for action to address loss and damage caused by climate change
- Start Ready | A GAD actuary takes part in a disaster risk financing initiative - Actuaries in government (blog.gov.uk)
Local:
- DRF in Pakistan (Start Network)
- Locally led action in Guatemala (Start Network)
- Guatemala Hub (Start Network)
- Responding to Cyclone Eloise in Mozambique (Start Fund)
- REAP video (Start Network)
- Disaster management committees in Assam lead the way during floods
- Local volunteers to the rescue as fiercer floods ravage northeast India: Reuters; preventionweb.net
- Women In Assam Weave Their Way Out Of Climate Change Woes
- India’s Mising tribe lives in traditional flood-resilient homes to adapt to climate change · Global Voices
- Initiative to strengthen resilience and sustainable adaptation to climate change in flood-affected areas of Majuli
- BRAC Climate Adaptation Capability Statement | Short overview document about some of BRAC's adaptation initiatives (PDF)
- Climate-Smart Agriculture Capability Statement | Short overview about BRAC's climate-smart agriculture initiatives (PDF)
- BRAC Mangrove Project | Short overview of a mangrove restoration project in Bangladesh (PDF)
- BRAC & MIT Climate Grand Challenges Factsheet | Short overview document about BRAC's climate forecasting and adaptation partnership with MIT (PDF)
- BRAC Ultra Poor Graduation Initiative | Climate Resilience Brief (PDF)
- BRAC Climate Bridge Fund | BRAC's climate adaptation financing initiative, currently in Bangladesh, with plans to expand in Africa (PDF)
- Climate Change in Bangladesh - a Fight for Survival | background video on climate change challenges and BRAC's response in Bangladesh:
- BRAC & MIT partnership | short background video on the BRAC & MIT partnership:
Raising our voice with purpose
Here are our COP27 key messages:
- The climate crisis is a humanitarian crisis. All humanitarian actors must play an active role in addressing escalating climate risks.
- Sustainable and effective climate responses must have local priorities at their core. Local actors and at-risk communities are best placed to identify problems and solutions based in their traditional knowledge.
- Anticipatory action is one of the practical ways that civil society can address loss and damage. We must scale up anticipatory action to meet the challenges of the climate crisis.
- The global approach to dealing with crises is not fit for purpose. The climate crisis is exacerbating humanitarian needs and humanitarian funding; centralised approaches cannot keep up with increasing demand.
- We need a more proactive, faster and localised humanitarian system where communities are supported to analyse risks, create plans and have access to pre-arranged financing to save more lives.
Here is the list of events that you cannot miss:
Useful hashtags:
@COP27P - #COP27 - #TogetherForImplementation - #ClimateAction
@StartNetwork - #AnticipatoryAction - #DisasterRiskFinancing - #LocallyLed - #StartFund - #ReshapingPower - #RebuildingSystems
Generic: #ClimateCrisis