Climate and the IFRC’s 2025 Global Plan
By the Climate Centre
The IFRC Global Plan 2025, launched in mid-December, sets out in detail the scale of the humanitarian challenges facing the world this year, and outlines its support for the 191 National Societies of the Red Cross Red Crescent network in addressing them.
“An era of polycrisis – overlapping, simultaneous and interrelated crises – is shifting to an era of permacrisis – long or permanent periods of crisis,” says Secretary General and CEO Jagan Chapagain in an opening message (italics in the original).
“People have little or no time to recover from one shock before being shaken by another. They are trapped in an unrelenting cycle. Navigating these challenges requires robust, agile and adaptable humanitarian responses.”
The Global Plan 2025, inspired by the IFRC’s Strategy 2030 that is now at its mid-term point, encompasses humanitarian action focused on needs and aspirations at community level, he continues, taking into account increased trends of climate-induced disasters, growing health and WASH needs, “and huge rises in the movement of people worldwide”.
“All IFRC work is carried out in support of the priorities and ambitions of National Societies,” the plan stresses, and where “international support is needed, it is captured through country-level planning.”
It lays out how the IFRC network will implement high-impact programmes “in interlinked areas like climate, disasters, health and migration in 2025, including through the IFRC’s innovative funding platforms.”
‘Navigating the shocks requires robust, agile and adaptable humanitarian response’
Climate and weather extremes such as floods, storms and heatwaves account for all but 10 per cent of disasters so far in the 2020s, the IFRC says.
As part of its role as a global organization, the 30 Federation expert reference centres will “carry out cutting-edge research, promote innovation, and provide vital guidance and resources in their specific areas of humanitarian work.
“The IFRC prioritizes rigorous research as a cornerstone for informed decision-making, ensuring that all work is grounded in high-quality data and comprehensive contextual analysis.”
Specifically with the Climate Centre, and with the American Red Cross, the IFRC’s partnership with USAID will continue through the project aiming at building the resilience of urban communities to extreme heat and coastal threats in nine cities in Bangladesh, Honduras, Indonesia and Tanzania; the existing project, Scaling up Locally-led Adaptation and Transforming Humanitarian Responses to Climate Change, is due to be scaled up from the current 13 countries to 18.
The IFRC and the Climate Centre will continue to support National Society assessments of climate risk in at least 15 more countries, while ecosystem assessments are carried out in three. (An IFRC survey has found that from 2005, at least 60 National Societies invested in climate risk assessments, communication campaigns and action plans on climate.)
New guidance developed last year by the IFRC, ICRC, German Red Cross, and the Climate Centre on disaster risk reduction amid conflict will be operationalized in 2025.
The ambitious multi-agency, Netherlands-supported Water at the Heart of Climate Action project, which got underway last October, gets fully up to speed in Ethiopia, South Sudan, Sudan, Rwanda and Uganda that together make up the Nile basin.
‘The IFRC prioritizes rigorous research as a cornerstone for decision-making, ensuring work is grounded in high-quality data’
As a priority for 2025, the Asia Pacific Disaster Resilience Centre, will develop and disseminate content related to climate change and disaster resilience, and strengthen research collaboration with the UN, the Climate Centre and the Global Disaster Preparedness Center.
The Climate Centre and the Livelihoods Reference Centre will work together on climate-smart livelihoods in various countries, including Madagascar, where 16 out of 22 regions have been identified as experiencing “regular climate shocks”.
The IFRC has set the total 2025 funding requirement for the entire network at 3.8 billion Swiss francs, distributed between the five strategic priorities (climate and environment; disasters and crises; health and well-being; migration and displacement; vales, power and inclusion), special purpose funds, and ongoing or estimated emergency appeals.
The six top funding requirements by country under climate and environment, in order, are: the Philippines, Kenya, Mozambique, Bangladesh and Zimbabwe.
“In 2025, the IFRC will continue to prioritize the Climate Action Journey, supporting National Societies in locally based and globally supported climate action,” the plan adds.
The National Societies of (alphabetically) Antigua and Barbuda, the Dominican Republic, Ethiopia, the Gambia, Ghana, and Paraguay are a few that have embarked on the journey or are about to.
The IFRC’s Global Plan 2025 lays out how the Red Cross Red Crescent network will implement high-impact programmes in climate, disasters, health and migration. (Image: IFRC)