Integrating the environment
into IFRC’s response, recovery
and resilience work
Tessa Kelly, Senior Officer, Climate Change
Coordination
IFRC
Overview..

How the environment connects to our work as a
humanitarian organisation

Examples of how we are integrating the
environment:




Response: Promoting a Green Response to disasters
Recovery: QSAND
Resilience: Integrating the environment ecosystem
management into our approach to resilience
Mobilizing action: youth and volunteers as agents of
change
Why?

The natural environment is inherently linked to the
safety, security and well-being of communities

Our environmental work is always linked to our
humanitarian mandate
Response: The Green Response Approach

Goal: Save lives and reduce suffering!

What: an approach response with the ambition of minimizing
adverse impact on the environment!,

Who: A working group of National RCRC Societies and IFRC

How: through promotion of guidelines, minimum standards,
technical advice, and post-disaster environmental impact
assessments (Sierra Leone, Haiti)
Environmental impact from response
Emergency response can potentially have a heavy
impact on the environment
e.g Flying 120 metric ton of relief materials over 2,000 km = 325 tCO2 e
(Equivalent to what approximately 50 ha of tropical forest captures/
year)
One large humanitarian
operation can equate to
more than the annual
emissions of its host
country.
Environmental impact from response

Extraction of timber (deforestation)
 Pollution of water (organic or chemical)
 Waste generated (e.g. packaging)
 Unsustainable extraction of water
Which can all affect the effectiveness of the
response…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Fish_Kill_745F2A9
C-65B8-D693-7ABA3282F6A1ECE4.jpg
Other examples of environmental impact:
Green response versus ‘normal’ response
‘Normal’ response
Green response
Fly in hygiene kits in emergency
Prepositioning and local purchase
Bring in external shelters
Build shelters from sustainable,
locally available materials
Bring in external specialists to ensure
capacity is available
Work with local staff whose technical
capacity has been built
One size fits all
Local, traditional solutions ?
Any materials that do the job will do
Materials are chosen taking
sustainability in account
Recovery – Development of QSAND

How do we look beyond meeting immediate needs?

BRE and IFRC developed QSAND (Quantifying
Sustainability in the Aftermath of Natural Disasters) as a
self-assessment sustainability tool focused on shelter
and settlement reconstruction in the aftermath of natural
disasters.

Consists of Pre-Assessment Tool (emergency relief) and
Core Assessment Tool (recovery and reconstruction)
Resilience: The environment as a foundation for resilience
Partners for
Resilience
disaster risk
reduction
climate
change
adaptation
Ecosystem
Management
& Restoration
Increasing resilience through climate smart and
ecosystem sensitive disaster risk reduction
Roadmap to Community Resilience
Mobilizing action: the power of youth and volunteers

The Sustainable Environment Restoration
Programme (SERP) - Kenya Red Cross, IFRC
and the Government of Kenya aim to plant 2.5
billion trees by 2020

Iranian Red Crescent, IFRC and Department for
Environment developing a training for youth and
volunteers in environmental protection
:
The path ahead....
 Development of a new
Environmental Policy
 Framework for Climate
Action towards 2020
 Establishing new
partnerships
 Continue process to review
and improve
Thank you
© International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, Geneva, 2014.
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