Identifying Natural Hazards and Impacts on Displacement Affected Communities Linked to Climate Change in West Africa

The challenge - lack of understanding of climate risks

DRC country operations in Burkina Faso, Niger and Mali have reflected DRC’s organizational commitment to address the impacts of climate change on conflict and displacement-affected populations, with all three Country offices having included climate resilience as a priority in their strategic plans. This interest follow a realization that humanitarian country operations struggle to translate strategic vision into impactful  on-the-ground programming. As humanitarians we need a better contextualized understanding of climate risks and their impacts on PoC in DRC’s operational contexts, as well as understand the capacity need for project designs to enable climate adaption. Furthermore, and motivated by the lacking understanding, humanitarian actors need to understand how to credibly access also the funding types needed to respond to complex needs.

This project will fill both knowledge and capacity gaps by setting the foundation that will inform project design and identify potential partners with relevant and complementary capacities. The project places a particular emphasis on National Adaptation Plans (NAPs) as central framework to explore and work with inclusion of communities affected by displacement into climate adaptation efforts, recognizing that NAPs are the product of a country-driven, participatory process to identify long-term climate adaptation needs across sectors, at all levels that is informed by climate science.

Laying the groundwork for wider climate adaption efforts

This project aims at laying the groundwork that will allow DRC to contribute to wider climate adaptation efforts in the Sahel region

Based on National Adaptation Plans, the project will in each country context help DRC to produce local climate risk profiles, scope potential partners with demonstrated experience in environmental issues and participatory method and identify relevant adaptation activities to enhance resilience and support inclusion of displacement affected people. Potential partners will include actors with demonstrated experience in environmental issues and actors that employ participatory methodologies and can include local government entities, technical service actors, civil society organisations and development actors.

The project will explore the local ecosystems around climate adaptation, identifying how humanitarian actors can better contribute to the implementation of local adaptation efforts, prioritizing actions that align with NAPs and to the needs of DRC populations of concern.