Environmental coordination in humanitarian settings: case study of the Energy and Environment Technical Working Group in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh

There is an increased recognition of the connection between environmental issues and humanitarian crises. The Rohingya refugee crisis in Cox’s Bazar is a tangible example of the long-lasting impacts humanitarian crises and their respective responses can have on ecosystems. Since August 2017, Cox’s Bazar has been home to over 900,000 Rohingya refugees as well as over 2.8 million local Bangladeshis. It is also one of Bangladesh’s poorest districts, with 33% of the population living below the poverty line, and 16% below the extreme poverty line. Deforestation has been on the rise for nearly three decades, with the Teknaf Wildlife Sanctuary forest area dropping from 3,304 hectares to 1,794 hectares between 1989 and 2009. The arrival of over 700,000 Rohingya refugees from Myanmar in 2017 put further pressures on an already fragile ecosystem. Forest land was cleared and hill land cut and levelled for the construction of camps across 2,639 hectares, 75% of which was within the protected forest area. The utilisation of forest resources also increased due to the additional demand for cooking fuel by the refugee community, resulting in further forest degradation of over 7,000 hectares within one year. Since 2017, there has also been a huge reliance on bamboo for shelter construction and repair within the camps, which has contributed to the destruction of already established bamboo forests throughout Bangladesh.

The need for humanitarian actors to prioritise climate action and to properly coordinate interventions with environmental issues was central to the formation of the Energy and Environment Technical Working Group (EETWG) in Cox’s Bazar. The group was established in early 2018 by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and the World Food Programme (WFP). This article aims to document the work and achievements of the EETWG up until end-2022 as a case study of an environmental coordination body which has the potential to be replicated in other humanitarian responses.

The EETWG is a cross-sectoral group promoting climate action and environmental sustainability in Cox’s Bazar. It operates as a think tank to generate innovative solutions and provide technical advice, documentation and recommendations to partners and sectors. To support longer-term planning and increase climate resilience of the Rohingya refugees and host communities through climate mitigation and climate change adaptation, the EETWG developed a three-year strategy in 2022 which outlines the focus and working modality of the group. The strategy was developed collaboratively and reflects partners’ programmes, and is aligned to the 2023 Joint Response Plan and the National Adaptation Plan of Bangladesh (2023–2025).

EETWG partners and stakeholders

The EETWG is co-led by the four UN agencies that founded the group and membership is open to all actors directly or indirectly engaged in energy and environment activities in the Rohingya refugee camps and surrounding host communities. As of December 2022, the EETWG had around 40 national and international non-governmental organisation (NGO) and UN partners. Other key stakeholders of the group include the community, government entities, development banks and international and national research institutions.

The EETWG encouraged partners to put both the refugee and host communities at the centre of their environmental interventions. It specifically organised human-centred design workshops with humanitarian workers and community members so that partners could incorporate the communities’ perspective when planning their interventions.

Coordination with local and national government entities was similarly essential to ensure that environmental interventions were aligned to national development plans and that the necessary approvals were sought and obtained when operating in protected areas. As the Rohingya refugee camps are within protected forest land, the EETWG maintained a close relationship with the Bangladesh Forest Department (BFD) as well as the Refugee, Relief and Repatriation Commissioner. The BFD provided invaluable technical knowledge on native species and plantation techniques to EETWG partners and it also supported training sessions.

The EETWG ensured effective and efficient coordination by mapping the different partners (across sectors) working on energy and environment activities as well as their comparative strengths. Successful partnerships were formed when partners recognised their strategic strengths and worked together with other actors in areas in which they were less strong (e.g. technical forest management). The EETWG also forged partnerships between research institutions and humanitarian actors, providing an opportunity not only to strengthen the robustness of data collected, but also to contribute to Bangladesh-based research institutes.

National and international NGOs make up the majority of active EETWG members and national NGO partners supported the group with local and technical knowledge. Such collaborations represent a particular strength of the EETWG, which was able to connect organisations with different funding resources and enable small national NGOs, with their solid local and technical knowledge, to support larger humanitarian actors.

EETWG achievements

There was a steady evolution in the work of the EETWG. In its initial years, it focused mainly on coordinating the provision of cleaner cooking fuel, solar lighting systems and reforestation efforts. However, by end-2022 it coordinated all climate-action-related interventions while ensuring other sectors’ activities were environmentally sensitive. The EETWG’s coordination efforts also contributed to the collective programmatic achievements of its partners between 2018 and 2022, such as the provision of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), the reforestation of around 3,200 hectares of land across Cox’s Bazar district and the solar-lighting system across the camp.

There are several examples of cross-sectoral coordination by the EETWG. This included joint efforts with the water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) sector in implementing the Solid Waste Management Strategy at an intersectoral level. The EETWG also worked with the Site Management and Site Development Sector and its partners in promoting Nature-Based Solutions (NbS) as efficient, cost-effective, flexible, low-regret socioeconomic approaches to reducing disaster risk and the impacts of climate change. As a result of the work of the EETWG and its partners since the early years of the response, there has been a shift towards NbS as opposed to traditional mechanical options for camp site development. To reduce dependency on bamboo for shelter construction, the EETWG worked with the Shelter and Non-Food Items (NFI) Sector in researching and advocating for more sustainable solutions for shelter construction as well as promoting the repurposing and recycling of damaged shelter materials.

The educational value of the EETWG for participants should also be recognised as a key success. For example, the discussions and presentations on NbS were received positively by attendees, and the EETWG meetings provided an excellent opportunity to standardise the language and explain approaches that different organisations employed in their work, effectively putting everyone on the same page during discussions.

EETWG challenges

The EETWG inevitably faced several direct and indirect challenges that are important to document to inform the establishment of similar coordination mechanisms in other humanitarian responses.

Due to the large number of partners operating in the Rohingya refugee camps, one major challenge was overlapping activities as well as the engagement of non-partner organisations. For example, there were many technical and non-technical partners establishing plantations in the camps which often led to competition over land availability. The role of the EETWG was therefore important in not only coordinating the different partners, but also in building trust between partners to work together, as well as engaging and coordinating with non-partner organisations. The group specifically encouraged joint programming and partnerships based on partners’ comparative advantages. Exchange field visits on various technical areas were organised for partners to showcase their successful interventions and to solve challenges together. Learning workshops following seasonal activities provided another opportunity for partners to build relationships. Building consensus between partners over technical specifications and guidelines presented another challenge, which was managed through dialogue between partners.

The EETWG played an important role in documenting and supporting relevant research and assessments that underpinned evidence-based programming. But due to the high number of operating partners and the considerable level of academic interest in the humanitarian response in Cox’s Bazar, there were cases of research being replicated. To address this, the EETWG set up a research database for partners to review before proposing any new research or assessments. EETWG coordination meetings offered a venue for implementing partners, as well as national and international research institutions, to present assessment proposals and findings for discussion. When needed, the EETWG also directly coordinated cross-sectoral environmental assessments (such as the Joint Environment Assessment of the Fire-Affected Camps in 2021) and supported annual plantation survival rate assessments.

Another challenge was the need to encourage non-technical partners engaged in sector-specific activities (e.g. Shelter/NFI, WASH, food security etc.) to make more use of environmental assessment tools (e.g. the Nexus Environment Assessment Tool (NEAT+), the Rapid Environment Impact Assessment and the Virtual Environmental and Humanitarian Adviser (VEHA) tool) as a standard practice when planning interventions. To help address this, the EETWG organised orientation and training sessions on different environmental assessment tools at a local level.

As with many humanitarian responses, funding for the Rohingya refugee crisis has decreased over the years. The biggest immediate issue facing EETWG and its partners in this regard was the need to ensure sustained funding for the provision of LPG to all refugee households. This is important not only to meet the essential needs of refugees, but also to avoid renewed degradation of recently restored landscapes. The EETWG supported its partners in advocating for funding as well as brainstorming solutions on maximising the cost and efficiency of LPG provision to ensure continuity of services. The EETWG also coordinated partners’ research into the most viable and long-term solutions for cooking energy.

Conclusion and learnings

Overall, the case of the EETWG in Cox’s Bazar illustrates three advantages of environment coordination in a humanitarian response: (1) building partnerships; (2) ensuring evidence-based programming; and (3) mainstreaming environmental sustainability. The working group established partnerships between organisations resulting in impressive collective actions; it provided a platform for sharing research and encouraging evidence-based programming; and it forged connections between different actors across sectors to mainstream environmental sustainability.

As the dynamics of the Rohingya refugee response in Cox’s Bazar is ever changing, the priorities of a coordination group such as the EETWG must be agile to the situation. The strategy was therefore developed as a working document to be reviewed (along with the objectives of and need for the EETWG) on a yearly basis to assess its effectiveness and relevance to the overall response. The inclusion of national government entities and local partners within this coordination model is, however, essential to ensure the values and environmental agenda continue.

The neutrality and cross-sectoral nature of the EETWG was fundamental to its success and should be an entry point for other environmental coordination bodies. By remaining neutral, the EETWG coordinator was able to recognise the comparative advantages of partners and encourage collaborations leading to more efficient and effective programming. Similarly, by retaining its cross-sectoral approach, the EETWG was able to facilitate connections between partners from different sectors who might not otherwise coordinate. For instance, WASH specialists coordinated with agricultural specialists around issues of water sustainability for farming activities in the host community. Similarly, shelter actors coordinated with natural-hazard specialists to ensure that shelters were not constructed within flood-prone watershed areas.

Communication between the coordination body and partners was essential for the group’s success. It was important that partners felt that they were contributing to the direction of the EETWG and benefiting from their participation in the working group. To ensure this, the EETWG facilitated technical trainings and practical guidance documents that could directly support partners’ programming. Regular surveys were also conducted to get feedback from partners, and this helped inform the group’s future activities. The EETWG also released a quarterly newsletter to keep the entire humanitarian community informed about the ongoing energy and environment interventions and the main achievements.

The importance of establishing an environmental coordination entity as soon as possible following a humanitarian crisis cannot be emphasised enough. The early establishment – within one year of the Rohingya refugee crisis – of the EETWG set a good precedent for addressing environmental issues within the response. Another early measure was a study on The Environmental Impact of Rohingya Influx, conducted by the UN Development Programme (UNDP) and UN Women together with the Ministry of Environment and Forests, which was used by many of the actors operating in the response as a reference to support programming. Subsequently, it was important for data to be collected, monitored and shared in order to improve understanding of the environmental impacts and support evidence-based programming.

As previously mentioned, by end-2022 funding was a challenge for the Cox’s Bazar response and funding of environmental interventions specifically became more restricted. The need for organisations to work together and promote more cost-efficient and -effective initiatives therefore increased. Innovative environmental activities and NbS are generally more cost-efficient and longer lasting and should therefore be promoted from the beginning of a response when funds are abundant. Due to limited funds the overall coordination system in Cox’s Bazar was reduced and several working groups were discontinued, but the EETWG was kept due to its important role in bringing partners across sectors together to promote climate and other environmental action.

From the donor perspective, another advantage in having a coordination entity is that it can provide consolidated and holistic information that in turn can inform future priorities and the direction of funding streams. It should also be noted that due to its agile nature, a coordination body such as the EETWG does not require excessive amounts of funding for its existence and the main cost for the EETWG is the coordinator position.

The EETWG also demonstrated how environmental coordination in humanitarian responses can provide a good entry point for engagement and partnership with government entities. The government of Bangladesh appreciated the environmental benefits of the provision of LPG cooking fuel, together with the tree-planting activities within and around the camps, and for its part the BFD provided invaluable technical support to these programmes.

Overall, it is probably fair to conclude that the EETWG was particularly valuable and effective as a coordination body within the refugee camps, but less essential with regard to the activities of the host communities in Cox’s Bazar where national entities play a key role. An important learning is therefore the need for coordination bodies to be context-specific and recognise that different settings require a different level of coordination and different stakeholder involvement.

Disclaimer: This article does not reflect the view of any of the EETWG UN lead agencies or partners.

Author: This article has been prepared by Fenella Henderson-Howat who coordinated the working group from 2021 to 2022. It is based on her experiences as well as publicly available resources.