The goal is to raise $100 million (around €93 million) by the end of 2025. The UN launched a fund on Wednesday April 24 to support refugees and internally displaced people. their country facing climate shocks. “The Climate Resilience Fund launched today brings together all the work of the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) on climate, including the Refugee Environmental Protection Fund” established in 2021, explained a door UNHCR spokesperson Olga Sarrado Mur added that the latter had collected around five million dollars in commitments.
According to the UNHCR, this new fund will finance initiatives aimed at protecting the most threatened communities “by giving them the means not only to prepare for the risks linked to climate change, but also to face and overcome them”. “The effects of climate change are increasingly devastating, exacerbating conflicts, destroying livelihoods and ultimately causing population displacement,” UNHCR chief Filippo Grandi said in a statement. communicated.
In this text, UNHCR recalls that its work to strengthen resilience to climate change is already part of its activities to protect and assist more than 114 million people around the world.
Building shelters adapted to climate change
In 2022, more than 70% of refugees and asylum seekers came from countries highly exposed to climate change. “Among the countries that have been the most generous in welcoming refugees, many are also those most affected by the effects of climate change,” recalled Mr. Grandi. But “funding allocated to combating the effects of climate change does not benefit forcibly displaced people, nor the communities that host them.”
The fund aims to promote the inclusion of refugees in climate policies taken at national and local levels. Contributions also aim to broaden the reach and impact of UNHCR’s climate action, enabling the agency and its partners to engage in climate-related projects in countries where it is already responding to situations of forced displacement linked to major conflicts, such as in Bangladesh, Chad, Ethiopia, Kenya and Mozambique.
It should make environmentally sustainable resources available in areas of displacement, providing more clean energy, for example, to operate water infrastructure, schools and health services used by refugees and the populations who welcome them. It will also make it possible to build shelters adapted to climate change and will ensure that the impact of humanitarian responses on the environment is reduced.