Nature-based Solutions for Climate Resilience in Humanitarian Action, Geneva/Hybrid, 26 Apr 2023

HYBRID EVENT: JOIN FACE-TO-FACE OR ONLINE

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.

Too often Internally Displaced Persons and refugee camps evolve into multi-generational communities that struggle with environmental degradation with limited pathways out of poverty and to self reliance.

Within these complex response dynamics, the environment is often overlooked or is treated as an afterthought. Yet it is fundamental to effective humanitarian action.

Nature-based solutions 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. In addition to disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation, nature-based solutions can provide health benefits and food and water security, among others. These benefits are directly tied to the work of key humanitarian clusters, including food security and nutrition, water, sanitation, and hygiene and health, as well as other cross-sectoral linkages.

Coinciding with the celebration of the 25th anniversary of the Sphere standards, this panel session will hear from experts from the field on how nature-based solutions can help build resiliency in humanitarian settings.

We will also launch the ‘Nature-based Solutions for Climate Resilience in Humanitarian Contexts –A Sphere Unpacked Guide’, which provides practical guidance to practitioners interested in implementing nature-based solutions in humanitarian settings.

If you are interested in integrating environmental considerations that benefit both people and the environment into humanitarian action, then this guide is for you. Please join us.