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Humanitarian impact of climate change

A) Objectifs de l’engagement:

Climate change is among the biggest humanitarian challenges of the 21st century. Climate change acts as a threat multiplier and increasingly as a threat to peace and security in its own right, with serious implications across the globe. In the absence of urgent and scaled-up climate action, it will have devastating effects on the most vulnerable people and communities around the world and will lead to an increase of humanitarian needs. There is an urgent need to better manage the rising risks of climate change through better adaptation and resilience building, early warning, early action, anticipatory action and disaster risk reduction.

The EU and its Member States pledge to:

  • strongly support the effective implementation of the existing legal framework dealing with disasters, especially legislation for disaster risk reduction;
  • improve anticipation of disasters in addition to reacting to them, including better understanding of how climate change may affect disaster risks, and promote forward-looking humanitarian assistance;
  • enhance preparedness and response capacities of humanitarian actors;
  • further engage in UNFCCC processes and in the implementation of the Paris Agreement, the implementation of the Agenda for Humanity and the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction and seek for enhanced synergies.

B) Plan d’action

The EU and its Member States will:

  • support early warning approaches, including early warning systems projects, in order to reduce the humanitarian impact of climate related disasters based on available forecast and risk information;
  • continue to improve the understanding of how climate change affects disaster risks, how climate change models can be integrated in risk assessments, and synergies in implementing disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation enhanced;
  • continue to work on effective national and sub-national approaches to disaster risk reduction and disaster preparedness and response, as well as to engage in climate adaptation planning and implementation, namely through the support to National Adaptation Strategies and Plans and the mainstreaming of adaptation issues in development and sectoral plans;
  • share best practice on the use of Forecast-based Financing and anticipatory humanitarian action;
  • contribute to exploring, developing, improving and coordinating innovative and anticipatory risk financing mechanisms within the humanitarian system at the global, regional and national levels, such as Forecast-based Financing;
  • commit to the operational strengthening and implementation of the Forecast-based Action by the Disaster Relief Emergency Fund (DREF) of the IFRC;
  • support the development of nature-based solutions as a means to increase the resilience of populations and to protect biodiversity and crucial ecosystem services, and improve the consideration of the environmental impact of humanitarian response in order to ensure the sustainability of the actions undertaken;
  • seek to maximize synergies between the implementation of the Paris Agreement, the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, and the SDGs.

C) Indicateurs permettant de mesurer les avancées:

D) Ressources nécessaires:

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