The International Rescue Committee (IRC)
Building climate resilience and addressing crises for at-risk populations
The Trafigura Foundation is working to build the resilience of vulnerable communities around the world so that shocks inflicted by climate change and conflict do not cast them into further crisis.
The challenge
Climate change is exacerbating conflict, crisis and displacement, often all at once and in the same locations, with dire impacts on the lives of the people affected. For instance, 16 countries at the intersection of climate-vulnerability and armed conflict represent a staggering 43 percent of all people living in extreme poverty, 44 percent of all people affected by natural disasters over the past three years, and 79 percent of all people in humanitarian need.
Yet these communities are getting left behind by the international approach to the climate crisis, making it clear that new solutions are urgently needed to increase the resilience of people facing these multiple and compounding pressures.
The solution
The International Rescue Committee (IRC) works to help people whose lives and livelihoods have been shattered by conflict and disaster to survive, recover, and gain control of their future. The IRC aims to build the climate resilience of communities in fragile and climate-vulnerable areas by helping them to forge more sustainable livelihoods, prepare better for climate shocks, and co-create effective, people-centred solutions.
Partnership impact
The Trafigura Foundation is supporting the International Rescue Committee’s initiatives to enable vulnerable communities to cope with the impacts of climate hazards and conflict on their livelihoods and food supply, and better protect their assets.
The programme is global in scope, but focuses on priority countries such as Niger, Pakistan, Somalia, South Sudan, and Syria. Alongside this, through IRC’s AA portfolio, the Trafigura Foundation is supporting organizational efforts in developing contingency planning and analysis for potential future responses in Central America (Guatemala) and East Africa (Kenya, Somalia, Ethiopia).
Concretely, the partnership will help the International Rescue Committee to establish an anticipatory action fund to finance and deliver risk-reducing activities before crises occur; to develop adaptation solutions in areas including seed security, disaster risk reduction, and livelihood diversification; and to spread the knowledge gained and increase advocacy so innovative action can be scaled up.
The partnership (2023-2026) aims to:
- Support the Anticipatory Action Fund
- Scale up a seed security project for farms in northeast Syria
- Design and test more innovative climate resilience solutions
