Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre Annual Report 2022 - World - ReliefWeb

Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre Annual Report 2022 - World | ReliefWeb

PREFACE

Twenty-twenty-two will be rem­embered by the humanitarian community and history, above all, as the year the conflict in Ukraine began. In some ways, the reappearance of conventional war between the armies of two nations in Europe took the Red Cross Red Crescent back to its roots.

In the Climate Centre, we continued to grapple with the challenges of the relatively new threat, historically speaking, of a climate crisis that is reshaping the world; in a real sense, it has been complicating and aggravating the impacts of the new war that involves countries that are also significant exporters of food and fertilizer.

As an IFRC reference centre, we continued to support the Red Cross Red Crescent Movement (“the Movement”) and its partners in reducing climate risks – in line with commitments in our joint ambitions and the climate charter. This applies not just directly to the themes detailed in this report, but also to the wider climate agenda – including locally led adaptation, National Society agendas, and climate-smart programmes at bilateral and multilateral levels.

Climate is altering the nature of humanitarian preparedness, with last year seeing the most ambitious target yet for early warning related to extreme weather: in March, the UN unveiled its goal of having everyone on Earth protected by early-warning systems within five years, with closing gaps in Africa a top priority.

A few weeks later, the IFRC set itself the target of allocating a quarter of its Disaster Response Emergency Fund to anticipatory action by 2025 – included in a new operational framework for scaling up the methodology that originates in a 2019 vision for forecast-based financing of the IFRC, the German Red Cross and the Climate Centre.

But at this writing, the earthquakes in Turkey and Syria have reminded us that – even as humanitarians make ever-greater efforts to predict what can be predicted in terms of climate impacts – seismic disasters, like wars and pandemics, remain almost entirely unpredictable.

Rarely has the concept of compound risks that was the focus of our annual report a year ago felt more apt.

We argued in November that there was no clear consensus on whether COP 27 in Sharm El-Sheikh would go down as a success or failure overall; even if it was a success, at least, in establishing the first global fund to channel support to vulnerable countries experiencing loss and damage related to climate change.

In fact, we added, at no time has the relevance of the humanitarian sector to the climate issue seemed so clear. The IFRC delegation, comprising numerous National Societies at the COP, launched its new global climate resilience platform there, and engaged on multiple fronts in Sharm El-Sheikh, alongside the ICRC, and partners like the German Red Cross-hosted Anticipation Hub and the Risk-informed Early Action Partnership, along with some impressive youth representatives.

It is also now a time of transition for us as a team, starting with the news in late November that our greatly respected and much-loved director Maarten van Aalst, who took over from the Climate Centre’s founder Madeleen Helmer in 2011, was leaving to become the next Director-General and Chief Science Officer of the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute; we all wished him well.

Later came the announcement that Marieke van Schaik, the Secretary General of the Netherlands Red Cross, our hosts, is also moving on in 2023.

The Climate Centre is hugely indebted to both, and we draw strength from their legacies in bracing for the challenges and harnessing the opportunities that lie ahead.

by Yolanda Kakabadse, and Acting Directors Julie Arrighi and Carina Bachofen