Mission

The Climate Centre supports the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and its partners in reducing the impacts of climate change and extreme weather events on vulnerable people.

Strategy

The Climate Centre aims to support the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement in meeting the commitments made at the International Conference, by strengthening the ability of all components of the Movement to understand and address the rising risks related to climate change, climate variability and extreme weather events.

Our strategy to address these rising risks is to integrate climate risk management into existing Red Cross and Red Crescent priorities and programs, rather than to develop stand-alone climate change activities.

The climate change problem is new and technically complex, and therefore requires raising awareness and building capacity throughout the Movement, especially in individual national Red Cross and Red Crescent societies. Our focus is particularly on developing countries, which are most vulnerable to climate change.

This capacity building is best provided in a decentralized manner, through existing structures, in particular support by the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) and Participating National Societies (PNSs). Hence, the Climate Centre focuses primarily on provision of guidance and tools, exchange of experience, training and technical backup for IFRC and PNS Disaster Management (DM) and health delegates, so that they can include climate change in their support to the national societies (NSs).

The enhanced capacity needs to be matched by increased resources to address the rising risks. The Climate Centre facilitates access to climate-change related channels of funding, generally not yet used by the Red Cross Red Crescent, and advocates for support to the most vulnerable people in the international climate policy arena, especially the UNFCCC.

Finally, the Climate Centre supports global planning, policy development, operations and communication work related to climate risk management, particularly with the IFRC Secretariat, PNSs and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

In all of these efforts, we emphasize the need for partnerships, with governments, knowledge centres and civil society including the private sector. First of all to improve the quality of the programmes of the Red Cross and Red Crescent, for example by cooperating with knowledge centres on early warning systems (a very effective way to deal with the increased risk of disasters), or by working with the private sector to implement risk reduction measures such as water tanks. Secondly, we need to work with partners to foster risk reduction beyond the scope of the Red Cross and Red Crescent, particularly with respect to development planning and government policies and programmes. Thirdly we need partnerships to shape the global policy response to the risks of climate change, in particular in the context of the UNFCCC, as well as through multilateral and bilateral development organizations.

Areas of work

The Climate Centre’s activities comprise six key areas of work, all of which are interconnected, for instance, successful capacity building relies on analysis of experiences, resource mobilisation, awareness raising, etc.

1. Communication / awareness raising

The need to significantly increase awareness within and outside the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement about the humanitarian consequences of climate change and about opportunities for and good experiences with climate risk reduction.

2. Capacity building

To significantly increase the number of staff at national societies, Zones, Regional Delegations and the Secretariat that are well equipped with climate change related knowledge, and use that knowledge in their work.

3. Mobilization of resources

To mobilize the significantly increased financial and human resources for climate risk reduction, in particular for the poorest people in the poorest countries.

4. Advocacy: international policy

To reflect Red Cross Red Crescent concerns and proposals in the post 2012 agreements under the UNFCCC and other international policy processes. More governments, donor agencies, civil society organisations and scientists acknowledge (i) the potential impacts of climate change on the  risks of natural disasters and on achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs); (ii) the value of mainstreaming disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation (iii) the need for more programmes on climate risk reduction; and (iv) the role civil society organizations, in particular the Red Cross and Red Crescent have in implementing these programmes.

5. Analysis

To build capacities, and strengthen communications and advocacy on climate related issues and support those with high-quality analyses of knowledge and experiences on climate risk management.

6. Operational support

To reduce the impacts of climate variability and extreme events through enhanced use of climatic information and related expertise by the Red Cross and Red Crescent.

Download here the Climate Centre's Strategic Plan 2008-2011 (pdf, 132 kB).

Read more (pdf, 43 kB)on what the Climate Centre can do for Red Cross Red Crescent Societies