Anticipatory action to build displaced populations’ resilience at the intersection of climate change, conflict and displacement

Most of the world’s forcibly displaced people live in fragile and conflict-affected countries, which are among the least able to adapt to climate change. Anticipatory action can better prepare displaced and other vulnerable populations for climate shocks in fragile and conflict contexts and reduce the humanitarian impacts. However, this approach is currently under-funded. Climate finance has a key role to play in addressing the needs of displaced and conflict-affected populations in advance of climate shocks including through anticipatory action and enhancing resilience. This agenda is all the more important given the United Nations (UN) Secretary-General’s call for early-warning systems to protect every person globally within five years through the Early Warnings for All initiative, which aims to ultimately link early warning to early action.

Scaling up a pre-emptive approach to crises

Anticipatory action (AA) is an important resilience-building and adaptation tool, which remains underdeveloped. It has the potential to be used by humanitarian and development actors more widely to minimise crisis cycles and build resilience and adaptive capacities, particularly in fragile and conflict contexts.

Anticipatory action has been presented as an important form of humanitarian action to pre-emptively and proactively mitigate the risk of climate hazards leading to disasters. AA interventions generally include:

• a pre-agreed trigger for action using forecast data, often in tandem with triggers based on population needs (e.g., acute malnutrition), including those identified from the past impacts of hazards;
• pre-arranged finance to be released upon activation of the trigger;
• a set of actions to mitigate impacts of the projected shock.

International actors – including the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, the UN, and the Start Network – have currently implemented AA pilots in 70 countries worldwide. These include countries affected by conflict and fragility, such as Somalia and South Sudan. Of the 13 AA pilots facilitated by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN OCHA), for example, seven are in countries on the World Bank’s list of conflict-affected situations and one on its list of fragile situations.

AA for climate shocks in conflict contexts

While there is a growing body of evidence on AA in conflict settings, such as a significant body of work on Somalia See for example: Levine, S., Humphrey, A., Weingärtner, L., and Sheikh, M. A. (2021) Understanding the role of anticipatory action in Somalia (https://www.sparc-knowledge.org/publications-resources/understanding-role-anticipatory-action-somalia); Feeny, E. (2017) From early warning to early action in Somalia: what can we learn to support early action to mitigate humanitarian crises? (https://www.oxfam.org/es/node/8295); and Gettliffe, E. (2021) UN OCHA anticipatory action: lessons from the 2020 Somalia pilot (https://reliefweb.int/report/somalia/un-ocha-anticipatory-action-lessons-2020-somalia-pilot). , much of this has emerged as conflict erupted during interventions rather than AA programming being specifically designed to take conflict conditions into account. In Ethiopia, for example, a 2021 OCHA AA pilot to mitigate the impacts of drought included the Afar region, which experienced conflict that temporarily halted the disbursal of assistance. Research that does exist exploring the impact of conflict on anticipatory action or on populations receiving AA has found that (unsurprisingly) it can significantly affect AA outcomes. In a study on the role of AA in complex crises, conflict was mentioned by many participants as having both direct and indirect impacts on their lives and livelihoods, such as inflation due to war in other parts of the country or even the world. This in turn reduced the benefit that cash transfers in advance of a drought were able to have, as funds intended to cover food or livestock feed did not stretch as far as they would have without inflation Easton-Calabria, E., Ahmed, A., Mohamed, D., and Singh, A. (2023) Anticipatory action in complex crises: lessons from Ethiopia. Boston: Feinstein International Center, Tufts University (https://fic.tufts.edu/publication-item/anticipatory-action-ethiopia/). .

Ongoing research from the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre seeks to identify the interactions between climate hazards and conflict. For example, an interactive story map by the Climate Centre mapped out the evolution and impacts of cyclones Idai and Kenneth in Mozambique and conflict on internally displaced people (IDPs), concluding that:

Cyclone Kenneth impacted the dynamics of conflict in Cabo Delgado in 2019–2022, including through the displacement of people, patterns of resettlement in high-risk flood zones, and economic dislocation. Subsequently, the number of IDP locations in the southern areas increased rapidly, and with it the number of vulnerable people exposed to flooding and future cyclone impacts in the south-east of the province.

These and other examples illustrate the need to consider, if not directly address, multiple shocks in AA. This has led to the creation, for example, of an Anticipatory Action in Conflict Practitioners’ Group hosted by the Anticipation Hub, which brings together practitioners and researchers working on designing effective AA to reach vulnerable populations in conflict settings. Relatedly, other work has sought to spell out an agenda for implementing AA in conflict settings, premised on the question:

If [AA] can help save lives and livelihoods when anticipated natural hazards strike in settings that are not affected by violent conflict, how many more people could be saved if [AA] was also used to inform humanitarian responses to natural hazards in contexts affected by conflict – or in response to the impacts of conflict itself?

This question is a valuable one in and of itself. It also raises the prospect of further supporting conflict-affected populations, including displaced people, through AA.

AA for displaced people

To date, few AA initiatives have focused explicitly on people who have already been displaced. This misses crucially needed opportunities for identifying and reaching people highly vulnerable to extreme weather events and the broader impacts of climate change. One of many important areas of value regarding AA for displaced people is the potential it holds to minimise the risk of additional displacement. Many camps and informal settlements are in hazard-prone areas, which increases the risk of people being displaced again. Indeed, some research estimates that people may be just as likely to migrate to environmentally vulnerable areas due to poverty or marginalisation as they are to move away from them. Supporting displaced people to preserve assets and prepare in advance of climate-related disasters may mean the difference between adapting in situ or being forced yet again to move onwards.

However, much of current refugee response is essentially crisis response, focused on attending to the immediate needs of people post-displacement. Ongoing calls to address the so-called ‘humanitarian–development–peace nexus’ illustrate both a need and an appetite for refugee assistance to move beyond an emergency mindset, to support refugees to build self-reliance and resilience, to create or recreate livelihoods in displacement and to exercise greater autonomy from the outset of displacement. Given that many AA interventions seek to assist populations in building resilience and preserving livelihoods, there is much for refugee assistance to explore in this domain, alongside learning from other AA programming focusing on relevant issues such as public health and food security.

While scarce, an emerging body of evidence and practice on AA for displaced people shares good examples and key considerations for wider application. Evidence on early warning and early action for refugees in Syria and Bangladesh illustrates how refugee and IDP camps can be effective sites of early and anticipatory action, due in part to existing humanitarian responses and coordination systems, which in some cases include engagement with national and local disaster management actors. In Bangladesh, for example, the country’s Cyclone Preparedness Programme was expanded to refugees, which has enabled greater early warning and early action in camps in Cox’s Bazar. Early actions included the evacuation and transportation of people with their assets and livestock to shelters in safer areas of camps. The Bangladesh Red Crescent Society champions early action and has established early action protocols that provide plans for anticipatory action to act in advance of hazards like cyclones, with support from the German Red Cross, the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre and others.

At the same time, much remains to be considered and there is a need for greater piloting of AA for displaced populations. For example, the diversity of these populations – ranging from IDPs to legally recognised refugees to those who have crossed international borders but have either not sought or do not meet formal legal thresholds for refugee status – should impact the design of AA. It may be easier to implement AA for refugees or IDPs living in formal camps and settlements; however, it should also be undertaken for undocumented forcibly displaced people living in urban areas alongside national host communities. Employing area-based approaches, wherein assistance is provided in areas known to hold high concentrations of forcibly displaced people as well as host populations, is one way that anticipatory action could be implemented to ensure that displaced people are not excluded from assistance at a time when they may need it most.

The timescale of displacement is a further consideration for AA programming, as recently displaced people may have different needs and live in different environments than those in protracted displacement. Recently displaced people may be confined to camps or reside in informal settlements close to country borders; due to short-term or inadequate shelter, they may be at greater risk of exposure to climate hazards than people who have been displaced for longer. Yet even in protracted displacement, encamped populations often live in highly hazard-prone areas of their host country and may in fact lack durable shelter due to host country regulations. These and other characteristics of displacement illustrate the additional complexities that displacement brings to the implementation of AA – and the value that AA may bring to displaced people.

Increasing finance and efforts for AA for displaced people, particularly in fragile and conflict contexts

AA for displaced people, and in fragile and conflict contexts more broadly, is currently impeded by large financing gaps in fragile contexts, including in major refugee-hosting countries. Fragile and conflict-affected contexts are only receiving a fraction of the support that is needed, leaving displaced people and other vulnerable populations ever further behind.

On the first day of COP28, displacement was included within the scope of the Loss and Damage Fund, building on the recognition at COP27 of forced displacement as a form of loss and damage. Both COP28 and the Global Refugee Forum in 2023 were important opportunities to advance climate action for climate-vulnerable communities, including displaced people. For example, the Climate, Relief, Recovery and Peace Declaration expressed concern about the effects of climate change, conflict, fragility and/or humanitarian crises on refugees and displaced people and committed to promote the leadership and empowerment of refugees and displaced people. At the Global Refugee Forum, pledges included commitments to scale up climate action and finance for refugees and other displaced people. Overall, increasing refugees’ and other displaced people’s access to early-warning systems and AA is paramount, and climate finance along with humanitarian and developing funding offers a large-scale means to do so.

Recommendations for making this a reality include:

• Scale up finance for adaptation and strengthening resilience in fragile and conflict contexts, including partnerships and earmarked funding to design and implement AA for displaced people.
• Integrate climate finance into humanitarian, disaster risk reduction and development finance, to better enable the provision of funding to address climate shocks in fragile and conflict contexts and for displaced people.
• Extend national early-warning systems and early-warning, early-action programming in host countries into refugee and IDP camps and settlements, wherever possible.
• Design and implement AA for displaced people with a particular consideration of unique aspects of displacement, which may include restrictions for refugees (e.g., a lack of freedom to movement that precludes the ability to evacuate in advance of a hazard) or high vulnerability which may lower a trigger threshold to account for higher risks arising from even moderate climate events.
• Increase the research evidence base on AA in fragile and conflict contexts, including AA for displaced populations.
• Include displaced people in early action and disaster risk management leadership and decision-making processes.
• Promote the imperative for refugee and IDP camps and settlements to be located in safe and secure areas with adaptations for climate shocks in place.

Evan Easton-Calabria is a Senior Researcher at the Academic Alliance for Anticipatory Action, Tufts University, and a technical consultant with the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre.

Adeline Siffert is Senior Humanitarian Policy Adviser on climate change at the British Red Cross.

Joanna Moore is Senior Humanitarian Policy Adviser on migration and displacement at the British Red Cross.

Eddie Jjemba is Focal Person for Climate and Migration at the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre.