Throughout its more than 20-year history, the Climate Centre has played an important role in shaping Red Cross Red Crescent policy, drawing on the best available science, evidence and experience.

In close collaboration with the IFRC secretariat – for which we are one of six global reference centres – and the ICRC, we have also brought bring a humanitarian perspective to global policy processes like the UN climate talks at yearly COP sessions, the Sendai framework, the Risk-informed Early Action Partnership, and the Nationally Determined Contributions partnership.

Key messages to COP28

Climate has risen higher and higher on the agenda of the Red Cross Red Crescent Movement. For example, the 33rd International Conference 0f the Red Cross and Red Crescent in 2019 called for “[e]ffective disaster laws, policies, strategies and plans that address climate change”.

In the first of 13 adopted resolutions, the 2022 Council of Delegates endorsed the Climate and Environment Charter for Humanitarian Organizations.

And at the 2022 General Assembly of the IFRC, its supreme policy-making body that meets every two years, Secretary General, Jagan Chapagain listed the biggest humanitarian issues affecting the world today: “the three Cs: Covid-19, climate change and conflict” (photo).

The IFRC’s Strategy 2030, first published in 2018, places climate change and environmental crises at the top of a list of five global challenges that must be addressed in the coming decade. Most recently, it has distributed six key messages to the COP 28 meeting in Dubai:

• Act urgently to address the humanitarian impacts of the climate crisis. Reduce greenhouse gas emissions to prevent worsening humanitarian impacts, whilst vastly scaling up adaptation action at the local level reaching the most at risk and impacted people and communities.
• Scale up anticipatory and early action to prevent extreme weather events becoming disasters, to save lives and livelihoods. Invest in early warnings and other systems for early action at the local level, reaching last-mile communities before disasters strike.
• Prioritize locally led action. Support meaningful engagement and participation to implement solutions by and with communities which builds resilience to climate impacts. Adopt and implement principles for locally led adaptation.
• Strengthen climate-resilient health systems, investing in primary health care, WASH, and community-level preparedness to respond to evolving climate risks and achieve universal health coverage goals.
• Increase adaptation finance for quality, quantity and accessibility. Prioritize funding for the most impacted countries and communities that reaches the local level.
• Avert, minimize and address loss and damage with new, additional, and predictable finance to support comprehensive action. Responses to loss and damage must reach the local level to people and communities most impacted.

Source : Climate Centre

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