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Supporting Refugee Self-Reliance Amid a Changing Climate
By Paul Karanja, Amy Slaughter, and Patrick Guyer
“Refugees and displaced people are among those most exposed to the climate crisis; many are seeking safety in countries that have done the least to contribute to climate change and yet have the least resources to adapt.”
– Andrew Harper, UNHCR Special Advisor on Climate Action
Jean* (name changed for protection purposes) and his family had just begun getting back on their feet when the floods came and almost swept it all away. After fleeing political persecution in their home country, Jean and his family sought refuge in Kenya, settling in the outskirts of the capital, Nairobi. With earnings from small-scale farming, the family managed to rent a modest house and plot of land, and to enroll their three children in local schools. Jean and his family were well on their way to self-reliance when heavy rains and flooding hit Nairobi in May 2024, damaging their crops and triggering flooding that carried away the family’s chickens and goats. The cost of the damage and loss of income from ruined crops and lost livestock threatened to reverse all the family’s progress since relocating to Kenya.
Jean and his family weren’t the only RefugePoint clients hit hard by the May 2024 floods. Water damage from rising floodwaters and leaking roofs damaged the houses and businesses of some RefugePoint clients so badly that relocation was their only option. For others, water damage ruined essential food, household items, and school books. Clients who earn money hawking goods on the street lost income due to being stuck indoors during the deluge and ensuing flooding of major streets.
Stories like Jean’s underscore how extreme weather driven by a changing climate can throw refugees off the path towards self-reliance. Although Nairobi occasionally experiences flooding during the annual heavy rain season, the May 2024 floods wrought unprecedented destruction. Nearly 300 people died across the country due to the flooding, with a further 55,000 households displaced, 11,000 cattle lost, and 65,000 acres of cropland damaged. The city and surroundings of Nairobi were hit particularly hard, especially the informal settlements where many refugee families and low-income Kenyans reside. The downpour was the immediate cause of hardship, but a combination of critical gaps in urban planning, weak drainage systems, informal construction close to waterways, and insufficient emergency response mechanisms made it a disaster.
Extreme weather events like these are becoming all too common, and not just in Kenya. Climate change is increasingly both a driver of displacement and an existential threat to those already displaced, along with the communities that host them. Whether experienced as rapid onset disasters such as storms, floods, wildfires, or extreme heat, or slow onset climate processes such as sea level rise, drought, and desertification, climate change is challenging human habitability in many areas and exacerbating poverty and insecurity in even more. The United Nations (UN) has documented a strong correlation between countries experiencing climate hazards, conflict, and displacement (see map below). The complex interplay of these forces makes it nearly impossible to disentangle the “push factors” that lead many to seek refuge across borders in neighboring countries.
The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) reports that 84% of refugees and asylum seekers worldwide originate from 15 highly climate-vulnerable countries, and nearly 75% of all forcibly displaced people live in countries with high-to-extreme exposure to climate-related hazards. Of the latter, nearly half also remain exposed to conflict, in countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen. In other words, most refugees are too often not finding safety in the countries to which they flee. Instead, they find themselves at ongoing risk of climate hazards, conflict, and repeated displacement.
Credit: UNHCR/Global Trends Report 2023
In response to this new reality, humanitarian actors are increasingly focused on policies and programs to mitigate and respond to climate impacts at all stages of the displacement cycle, from root causes, to life in exile, to eventual solutions (when available). Since RefugePoint assists refugees in host countries to become self-reliant and helps those who cannot remain safely access pathways to safety elsewhere, our climate actions center around these same activities. We’ve assisted refugees to access resettlement from 11 of the 22 countries identified by UNHCR as the highest priority for climate action, given extreme vulnerability. We also work with refugees from the most severely affected countries, including Somalia, South Sudan, the DRC, and Chad. And, we work with refugees like Jean in Kenya to stabilize their lives in exile and become self-reliant in the countries where they have sought refuge.
Refugee livelihoods are particularly vulnerable to climate change, complicating their path to self-reliance. Compared to members of their host communities, refugees have fewer adaptive measures available to them. They often lack formal work authorization and freedom of movement, circumscribing their options when their livelihoods are threatened by environmental disasters. Late last year, the Refugee Self-Reliance Initiative, a strategic initiative of RefugePoint, convened a technical working group to focus precisely on this topic: climate risks to refugee self-reliance. Their work culminated in 10 key considerations for self-reliance programming, including building community-level resilience, integrating displaced people in national climate policies and early warning systems, expanding development of both “green livelihoods” and climate-adaptive livelihoods, and more.
Considerable work has been done on climate-adaptive livelihoods in rural, agricultural settings, such as the use of drought-resistant seeds, quick-growing crops, and innovative techniques for irrigation and water conservation. Less attention has been given to climate-adaptive livelihoods in urban areas, particularly for refugees, despite the fact that the majority of the world’s refugees live in urban or peri-urban areas. This is an increasing focus for RefugePoint moving forward and is an area in which we hope to make significant contributions to the policies and practices of the sector.
In the aftermath of the 2024 Nairobi floods, RefugePoint mobilized emergency support to rapidly respond to the damage, loss, and displacement that clients experienced. For Jean and his family, RefugePoint mobilized an emergency cash disbursement along with short-term food assistance to help them cope with flood damage and the resulting loss of farming income. Fortunately, Jean was also able to recover nine of his goats that were lost in the storm, which helped the family get back on track with their farming business. For other client households affected by the flooding, RefugePoint provided emergency cash grants to defray the costs of relocation and replacing lost or spoiled food, furniture, and household effects. We provided mental health support for those affected by flooding and distributed water purification tablets along with food assistance packages so clients could treat drinking water tainted with wastewater due to overwhelmed drains and sewers.
RefugePoint is working hard to improve our ability to respond to climate-driven events like flooding in the future, as well as working with clients to make their homes and businesses more resilient to climate change. We’re drafting new procedures for how we prepare and support our clients to respond to climate-driven events, and are exploring climate-smart entrepreneurship as part of an upcoming review of our support to refugee entrepreneurs. But this is just a small piece of a much bigger puzzle of how RefugePoint and the humanitarian sector must respond to climate change as both an emerging driver of displacement and as a roadblock to self-reliance for refugees in host countries. With climate change, protracted conflicts, displacement, and urbanization simultaneously on the rise, it is imperative that we improve – and include refugees meaningfully in – our efforts to mitigate, adapt, and respond to climate change.
Click here to find out how else RefugePoint is helping refugees reach a point of self-reliance.
References:
Briefing notes – UNHCR: Refugees and displaced people need seats at COP28 table
UNHCR Global Trends Report 2023
UNHCR Strategic Plan for Climate Action 2024-2030
UNHCR Global Trends Report 2023
UNHCR Strategic Plan for Climate Action 2024-2030
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