Climate and environment

Evidence-based scientific publications have been warning us for several years that Climate change can cause or enhace different impacts at social, economic, environmental, and/or humanitarian level. It represents a great threat to humankind and in the last decades we have already witness some of the damage it can cause. Climate change is a humanitarian crisis, and requires to scale up and join our efforts at global, regional, national and local level.

Climate variability has a direct impact on our water resources, from water quality and availability, to public health related aspects like the altered distribution of vector-borne and water-borne diseases. It also directly contributes to the higher frequency and intensity of extreme weather events like heatwaves, coldwaves, floods, landslides, hurricanes, typhoons and droughts.

IFRC has identified seven steps to support large-scale evidence-based action to reduce the health impacts of climate change, summarized in the diagram below:

Guidelines and tools

Red Cross Red Crescent Guidelines and tools

Reducing the Health and Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) Impacts of Climate Change

This publication from 2021 is a resource for National Red Cross Red Crescent Societies and their partners seeking to address health risks that are aggravated by climate change. It outlines the adverse impacts of climate change on human health and seeks to unpack the second pillar of the RCRC Movement’s Ambitions to Address the Climate Crisis.

International Red Cross Red Crescent Movement’s Ambitions to Address the Climate Crisis

This publication from 2020 builds on our unique added value and expertise as the largest humanitarian Movement in the world, and articulates what we are ready to do collectively to address the climate crisis.

IFRC's World Disasters Report 2020.

Come Heat or High Water: Tackling the humanitarian impacts of the climate crisis together (2021)

IFRC's Displacement in a Changing Climate

Localized humanitarian action at the forefront of the climate crisis. (2021)

The Cost of Doing Nothing

The humanitarian price of climate change and how it can be avoided. (2019)

IFRC's Secretariat Environment Policy

This policy ensures the expansion of IFRC's “do no harm”commitment to the environment by fullfilling its environmental obligations. It also sets its environmental goals and objectives, and commits to improve its environmental performance. It may also be useful as a reference for National Societies in their environmental policy development.

External Guidelines and Tools

Learning resources

Red Cross Red Crescent Learning resources

Climate Change Impacts on Health and Livelihoods

An introduction to the series of country reports:

External Learning resources

Advocacy and communication material​

The Climate and Environment Charter for Humanitarian Organizations

 At the 33rd International Conference of the Red Cross and Red Crescent in December 2019, the ICRC, the IFRC and a number of National Societies committed not only to adapting their ways of working but also to developing a charter to support and promote greater climate action within the humanitarian community at large.

RC Climate Centre’s – The Science of Climate Impacts: Eight humanitarian insights from the latest IPCC report

 Making sense of climate change requires an enormous, analytically rigorous, collective effort. More than 270 scientists from around the world have worked together to assess knowledge on climate change impacts, adaptation and vulnerability. Their answers were released in the Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Working Group II. Now we need to speak about the report’s implications, in language(s) everyone understands. 

To include resources on this page, or for more information on IFRC initiatives please contact: wash.geneva@ifrc.org