In 2023, the figure reached 26.4 million worldwide as a result of floods, storms, wildfires and other disasters, according to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC).

Climate change is not solely responsible, but the frequency and intensity of extreme weather is increasing as global temperatures continue to rise. As a result we can expect that more and more people will face losing their homes and their livelihoods.

It is commonplace to see people boarding up their homes and literally battening down the hatches before a major hurricane is predicted to make landfall. For those facing extreme weather, this mentality is no longer confined to one-off events, but a regular mindset as the climate crisis continues to bite. Many communities around the world know that building resilience against intense storms, floods and heat waves is now essential to daily life.

“No country is immune to disaster displacement,” Alexandra Bilak, IDMC’s director, said in a recent press statement. “But we can see a difference in how displacement affects people in countries that prepare and plan for its impacts and those that don’t. Those that look at the data and make prevention, response and long-term development plans that consider displacement fare far better.”

This kind of planning is happening in countries on the front line of the climate crisis. Some small island nations, for example – many of them low-lying – are seeing their homes permanently washed into the Pacific Ocean.

Paradise lost

According to Fiji’s government, disaster events in the Pacific island state over the past 40 years have led to annual economic damages of around US$16 million, with 40,000 people impacted each year. This is due to increase to an average of US$85 million per year in losses, as a result of cyclones and earthquakes. These figures are high for a country with a population of under 1 million people.

Many of the people most impacted by climate disasters live in informal urban settlements. Their homes are extremely vulnerable to the regular cyclones that hit the island nation, especially as they are often located near riverbanks or around the coast.

The subtle art of scaling up climate adaptation

A recent Adaptation Fund project in Fiji was designed to build resilience against regular extreme weather events and “climate proof” housing for the foreseeable future. The project, implemented by UN-Habitat, looked at ways to protect thousands of homes when storm surges overwhelm local water and sanitation infrastructure. The settlements were located across four main urban areas on the island: Lautoka, Sigatoka, Nadi and Lami.

Low-cost, high-impact

Constructing cyclone-resilient buildings was an essential component of the work.

Moving new homes away from vulnerable hot spots, such as foreshores, floodplains and riverbanks, was a first step. As many settlements are self-built, training local people in new construction methods ensures future homes can be built with extreme weather in mind. An innovative element from the project was so-called ‘stilted safe rooms’ – low-cost and simple raised structures intended to provide refuge during periods of intense flooding.

Flood control is a key component of climate-proofing infrastructure. In Fiji, priorities included building upgraded site drainage to reduce runoff; upgrading water sources and storage; and improving access ways, to ensure people can respond when cyclones put pressure on local infrastructure.

School’s out

In Haiti, a very poor and conflict-torn country beset with repeated natural disasters, climate-proofing infrastructure is still at an early stage. The country’s education sector, for example, has been repeatedly hit by extreme weather, including in 2016 when Hurricane Matthew damaged a quarter of its schools. Rebuilding after such frequent turmoil now requires new ways of thinking.

With the help of around US$10 million of funding from the Adaptation Fund, UNESCO is currently supporting the restoration of 620 schools across the country. Their work has included raising awareness of disaster risk reduction, improving knowledge of safety levels, and retrofitting existing buildings.

As climate disasters grow, early warning systems become essential

Panaroty Ferdinand Prophete, UNESCO’s national coordinator, told Climate Home that “nearly 200 technicians, students and experts received training on new construction techniques, an early warning system and the management of temporary shelters.” This training included working directly with the Ministry of Education to develop new construction standards for schools.

Over 150,000 students have so far benefited from the project, a success Prophete attributes to “very good synergy” between the different stakeholders. “This makes it easy to put in place a community emergency plan as well as the execution of the national action plan for resilient school infrastructure,” he added.

Best defence

Experts agree that we need to change the way we live in response to climate disasters. Moving settlements away from major water sources is, if possible, a simple solution. More projects supported by the Adaptation Fund – from Indonesia to Antigua and Barbuda – are focusing on blocking, redirecting or draining excess water as it comes in, to keep homes intact and habitable. These responses will remain some of our best defence against more unpredictable and extreme weather.

“A key sector for the Adaptation Fund is averting and reducing loss and damage through disaster risk reduction and early warning systems, which account for about 16% of the Fund’s current portfolio. Many additional multi-sector projects also include elements that are building resilience to disasters,” said Mikko Ollikainen, head of the Adaptation Fund.

“From climate-proofing homes and community centres to making informal settlements resilient to floods, it’s a vital aspect of the Fund’s work. Many of the projects are replicable and scalable so we hope they will also serve as models to create a larger positive impact on additional vulnerable communities beyond those served by the projects,” he added.

There is only so much adaptation can achieve if the flood waters get too high, or if cyclones increase in intensity and destructive force. But there are many cost-effective solutions to offer people a better chance of keeping their homes intact when extreme weather hits.

These investments can’t come soon enough for communities living in climate hot-spots and can serve to tackle long standing poverty issues at the same time. Fast-tracking these solutions will become ever more important if we want to reduce the millions of newly displaced people each year.

Sponsored by the Adaptation Fund. See our supporters page for what this means.

Adam Wentworth is a freelance writer based in Brighton, UK.

The post Climate disasters challenge right to safe and adequate housing appeared first on Climate Home News.

Achieving this aim would mean tens of billions more dollars flowing into adaptation projects. This huge – but achievable – feat would be immensely beneficial for communities around the world suffering from regular extreme weather events.

Alongside his call for greater adaptation finance, Guterres outlined five priorities for the sector, one of which was making it easier to access funding, especially for the vulnerable.

If billions are going to be spent on helping countries adapt to climate change, we need to make sure the money is reaching the people who need it the most. This is where the concept of locally led adaptation (LLA) comes in. The term refers to the central importance of providing frontline communities with the power and resources to respond to the climate crisis.

The Adaptation Fund was among the first group of international organisations to endorse a set of principles on locally led adaptation during COP25 in 2019. These principles cover everything from devolving decision-making to addressing inequalities, from providing predictable funding to ensuring the whole process is open and transparent. The principles have since been endorsed by over 100 organisations, including government ministries, global charities and development agencies.

This new model sets the scene for how current and future climate adaptation should be implemented. The focus is on an inclusive approach which puts communities most affected by climate change at the heart of how decisions are made.

Putting words into practice

The Adaptation Fund has been applying the principles of locally led adaptation for over a decade. The fund’s direct access scheme allows national organisations based in the countries they serve to manage all elements of a project, from design to monitoring.

The fund pioneered its first enhanced direct access (EDA) projects in 2014, taking direct access a step further in empowering national institutions to identify and fund local adaptation projects. This led the fund to establish an EDA funding window in 2021, and in April 2024, it went one step further by creating dedicated finance streams to support locally led adaptation.

The fund believes this new approach makes it “the first multilateral climate fund that has fully operationalised the global LLA principles,” it said in a press statement.

“The Adaptation Fund has a rich history of innovating and evolving to respond to countries’ urgent adaptation needs. Over several years, the fund has continued to offer more opportunities to vulnerable countries through diverse funding windows beyond its regular projects,” Mikko Ollikainen, who heads up the organisation, told Climate Home.

“Creating these dedicated funding windows to support locally led adaptation will open even more opportunities for vulnerable countries to enhance capacity building by offering local governments, NGOs, community organisations, indigenous groups, young entrepreneurs and a broad range of local actors the opportunity to develop and implement sustainable adaptation actions directly,” he added.

Tailored solutions

One of the pioneering locally led adaptation projects the fund supported took place in South Africa from 2015 to 2020. On opposite ends of the country, two districts – Namakwa in the Northern Cape and Mopani in Limpopo – are subject to the same extreme weather: hotter temperatures with more intense dry and wet spells. These more uncertain, dangerous conditions put ever greater pressure on fragile local communities.

The pilot project was implemented by the South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI). It was intended to strengthen local institutions to adapt to these new climate realities, and provided funding to 12 ‘small grant recipients’ – groups based in the region and with an intimate understanding of how the communities work.

Investments were made after vulnerability studies were conducted and tailored solutions created to meet local needs. The ambition of these groups was simple – to ensure resources went to people most vulnerable to climate change. A raft of innovative solutions were then implemented, from rainwater harvesting and solar pumps, to cooling sheds and bio-gas digesters.

‘Considerable impact’

“The reach and positive impact on people’s livelihoods and adaptive capacity through assets, learning and networks was considerable,” the project’s evaluation report concludes, adding that the focus on careful, appropriate investment “has significantly improved the lives of those directly, and indirectly connected with the projects.”

Mandy Barnett, SANBI’s chief director for adaptation policy, told Climate Home that one lesson from the project was a need to develop trust and effective relationships with people on the ground.

“We learned what we should do and what we shouldn’t do in terms of getting climate finance to the right people,” she added, noting that communicating expectations, from the funder downward, was key.

“A wider challenge is the need to translate climate science into local concerns. We want to empower people to make informed decisions, and to do this requires you to invest time and resources into capacity building,” she added.

New opportunities

The South African project helped pave the way for the many LLA schemes the fund is now supporting around the world. Fast forward to 2024 and a range of new proposals have just been approved which puts decision-making powers into the hands of local institutions.

They include a Peruvian project to support water, agriculture and food security; a Rwandan project to build climate resilience in rural areas; and in Belize, a plan to restore ecosystems and livelihoods battered by climate-related disasters. What these projects have in common is not only a plan to fight climate change, but one where the tools and resources are under local control.

“These new LLA windows take a significant step forward in providing an opportunity to directly lead and develop adaptation projects on the ground and accelerate effective, scalable actions worldwide in the process,” said Ollikainen.

The way forward

On World Environment Day this June, the UN Secretary-General took the opportunity to speak up about adaptation finance again. He highlighted how the last 12 months have been the hottest on record. “For every dollar needed to adapt to extreme weather, only about 5 cents is available,” he said.

The most recent data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development shows that, in 2022, $115.9 billion was raised for climate finance, the first time this target has been achieved. Adaptation finance made up $32.4 billion of the total, a way off the 50% goal endorsed by the UN head, but still three times higher than what it was in 2016.

Where this money is spent will determine how vulnerable regions can survive the impacts of climate change in the coming years. But as more locally led adaptation projects are rolled out, affected communities will finally have a direct say in how that happens.

Sponsored by the Adaptation Fund. See our supporters page for what this means.

Adam Wentworth is a freelance writer based in Brighton, UK.

The post Finance flowing for locally led climate adaptation appeared first on Climate Home News.