Climate situation wreaks havoc in Asia Pacific; causing relentless floods, diseases, and life-threatening heat

Kuala Lumpur/Dhaka/Beijing, 10 August 2023 – Countries across Asia Pacific are reeling from multiple disasters that are wreaking havoc in the region and climate analysts attribute this to a phenomenon called El Niño. The International Federation of Red Cross Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) urges authorities and humanitarian organizations to brace for multiple disasters hitting simultaneously, with more intensity. These past few months, the IFRC has released eight Disaster Response Emergency Fund (DREF) allocations for climate related events – three for dengue to Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka, three for floods, to Mongolia, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, one for a tropical cyclone to Bangladesh, and one for a cold wave event to Mongolia. Although the full impact of the phenomenon is expected in the months of September this year to March next year, many regions in Asia and the Pacific are already facing multiple hazards now, and they all point to a deteriorating climate situation. In Bangladesh, dengue infections have swarmed the nation and there have been almost 30,000 new cases this year, almost 5 times higher than last year's numbers. Moreover, local public health experts confirm that many people are being infected with multiple types of dengue, making the treatment complicated. Sanjeev Kafley, Head of IFRC Bangladesh Delegation says: "We are working closely with the Bangladesh Red Crescent Society (BDRCS) and health authorities to combat the situation. In 85 dengue hotspot wards in the cities of Dhaka, Chattogram, and Barishal, our volunteers are focusing on public awareness and prevention efforts. We are progressing to procure testing kits for our health authorities as well as supporting the availability of platelet concentrate through the blood banks of BDRCS. We are supporting in all intervention points, from life-saving areas to preventative measures." IFRC’s climate mitigation efforts at national levels in different countries are towards improving water management systems, curbing mosquito breeding, strengthening surveillance and monitoring systems to track outbreaks and increase health care capacity to managing cases and providing treatment. Olga Dzhumaeva, Head of IFRC East Asia Delegation says: “Torrential rains and floods hit East Asia severely this summer. North, northeast and some regions in southern China saw one of the largest rainfalls Beijing has experienced in the past 140 years. Capital city Ulaanbaatar and 13 provinces in Mongolia, central parts and many provinces of the Republic of Korea, and in the Kyushu region of Japan also suffered from severe impact of extreme rains in July. As a result, millions of people in East Asia were greatly affected and displaced, and roads, bridges, homes, and infrastructures were very badly damaged, many beyond repair. In responding to the situation, our colleagues and volunteers from National Societies in China, Japan, Mongolia and Republic of Korea have been deployed to the front lines, activating their emergency responses, making every effort to evacuate people trapped by the floods and debris, and urgently sending relief supplies such as blankets, tents, folding beds to the affected areas.” IFRC, National Societies, and its partners believe we equally need to focus on resilience building through inclusion of nature, anticipation, adaptation and mitigation. Early or anticipatory action, for example, whereby funds are proactively allocated based on weather forecasts to support people at risk before disaster strikes is an important emphasis in the context of rapidly increasing climate hazards. Luis Rodriguez, IFRC Asia Pacific, Lead for Climate and Resilience says: “These events were more intense than usual due to the prevailing warming conditions, and this brings heavier precipitations, triggering cyclones, rains, and floods. These climate factors also heavily influence the dynamics of infections. Increased rainfall creates new and conducive habitats for larvae or viruses, and increased temperature accelerates the development of insects carrying viruses and virus incubation time. Severe changes in temperature and precipitation patterns due to climate change will enable the spread and transmission of disease in areas that are currently considered low risk or dengue free. These are all not stand-alone events. They are connected.” In anticipation of more extreme weather events that will hit more regions in the Asia Pacific, national societies together with IFRC are carrying out heavy preparedness measures such as heatwave action planning, simulations and drills, prepositioning of relief stocks, and evacuation and rescue equipment, and urgent refreshers on procedures and regulations for volunteers, staff, and technical teams. Moreover, the DREFs ensure National Societies can act speedily and efficiently and this means millions of lives and livelihoods are saved. For more information or to request an interview, please contact:  [email protected] In Kuala Lumpur: Afrhill Rances, [email protected] , +60 19 271 3641 In Geneva: Anna Tuson, [email protected] , +41 79 895 6924

11/10/2022 |

Article

The IFRC wants to leverage financial markets to keep up with the world’s unprecedented humanitarian needs. Here’s how.

This opinion editorial was originally published on Fortune.comhere. -- The humanitarian and private sectors may appear to be at opposite ends of the spectrum, but closer collaboration could yield solutions to the world’s biggest problems. From Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) to Environmental Social Governance (ESG), the corporate world has increasingly sought to engage in socially and environmentally beneficial activities. Meanwhile, humanitarian organizations are overwhelmed with rapidly increasing needs that traditional funding cannot keep up with. TheGlobal Humanitarian Assistance Report 2022found that total funding for crisis response has plateaued despite historically high (and rising) demand. The report showed that the value of international humanitarian assistance reached an estimated $31.3 billion in 2021. The World Economic Forum anticipates an increase to $50 billion by 2030. The donors we currently rely on—primarily a core group of governments—are too few and too precarious. We need to grow and diversify our funding sources if we are to have any hope of keeping up with the level of humanitarian needs forecast. I believe it’s possible to move toward a shared ownership approach, whereby both the private sector and humanitarian partners align their objectives, including financial returns. The private sector’s responses to the conflict in Ukraine and the COVID-19 pandemic have shown its power in times of crisis. To date, this has been mostly through grants, but the private sector’s skills, knowledge, and expertise could be the real game changers for the humanitarian sector. Insurance companies are one example of where we have significant overlap when we drill down into our operations and goals: We are both dealing with the impacts and consequences of loss and damage caused by crises and disasters. Since 1985, the IFRC’s Disaster Response Emergency Fund (DREF) has worked as a central pot of money that can be quickly and transparently distributed to support community action in countries facing disasters before or when they hit. Now we are working with AON and the Centre for Disaster Protection to structure an innovative insurance mechanism that uses commercial insurance markets to leverage contributions of traditional donors in order to increase the capacity of the DREF for responding to natural disasters to CHF 100 million by 2025. We are aiming for the new insurance mechanism to be in place in 2023. We are taking a system that’s been proven over three decades and adapting it to an uncertain future. Through the insurance mechanism, instead of putting up the money to fund disaster responses, donors pay the premium. This stretches the value of their contributions and transfers the risk to the private sector if allocation requests exceed available resources. The approach uses reinsurance markets to lay off the risk of excessive natural hazards and ensure funds for response are available in a timely and reliable manner even in periods of excessive or unanticipated demand. Our ambition will not be possible to achieve through grants alone. We will need innovative financing that can leverage our resources and allow for the private sector to meaningfully engage. Through our initiative, we are keen to demonstrate the value of structures that can be more sustainable, replicable, and scalable to address humanitarian needs. Currently, we’re exploring options of innovative finance for our other flagship programs, including the potential to use green bonds or climate bonds as well as impact bonds for our water, sanitation, and hygiene programming. We’ve set up a pilot with the Islamic Development Bank following the impact bond model that unlocks private capital through investors. Instead of the donors paying grants ahead, they pay when the results are proven. Investors provide the upfront funding, while the bank acts as the guarantor, which reduces the cost of the bond and enables true additionality of capital. In collaborative financing models, it is important to consider the value and approach for each partner: The private sector can engage in ways that drive social impact as well as profits, governments can lead the change by creating enabling frameworks, and humanitarian agencies can embrace more agility in their operating models—all with the goal of mobilizing more private sector funding for humanitarian assistance and leveraging overstretched government donors’ grants. We also need to strike the right balance between risks and rewards and be alert to conflicts of interest, value for money, and ethical questions. Today’s humanitarian needs demand that we create opportunities and conditions for private capital to come in to scale up funding, but it is paramount that the product we develop is in line with our principles. This transition will take time and require making difficult compromises and changes to our operating models. We will likely fail before we succeed, but unless we try—with the will to learn from our mistakes—our humanitarian investments will continue to be mere drops in an ocean of needs. For the private sector, this will be an opportunity to design innovative solutions that align with their ESG approach and to be at the forefront of a new untapped market while saving the lives of millions of people.