Annual Report 2017

As part of its continuing engagement with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the build-up to its next assessment of the global climate – its sixth, known as ‘AR6’ – the Climate Centre initiated a major conference in Nairobi on climate risk management and invited the IPCC to jointly host it.

This International Conference on Climate Risk Management was hosted by the Kenya Red Cross (KRC) and focused especially on “the most vulnerable human and natural systems”, according to the invitation sent out together with the IPCC.

The conference gathered scientists from at least 35 countries, including both co-chairs of the IPCC’s Working Group II on impacts and adaptation: Dr Debra Roberts of South Africa (at left in photo) and Dr Hans-Otto Pörtner of Germany, and generated recommendations for AR6 covering risk, timelines and priorities. The Climate Centre supported travel and accommodation for participants from developing countries.

Dr Roberts said the conference represented “an important contribution to improving our understanding of risk and vulnerability across scales, contexts and sectors, and of how that knowledge could inform the identification of resilient and sustainable responses”.

Alongside the conference, at the KRC’s Boma Centre, a high-level event at the University of Nairobi unpacked adaptation issues for AR6 of particular importance to developing countries. 

The following month a further scoping meeting in Addis Ababa of some 200 experts from 60 countries, also attended by Dr Van Aalst, drafted an actual outline for AR6 and was described as “a decisive step to advance the work plan of the IPCC” by its chair, Hoesung Lee.

After more than four years of FbF pilot projects that generated many lessons, 2017 marked a new way of working to allow early action from ‘impact-based forecasts’. This was at the forefront of development and research, together with a strong focus on evidence-based early action.

By the end of the year, the first nationwide FbF activation was underway in Mongolia (video), where an impact-based government forecast for extreme-winter conditions was used by the Mongolian Red Cross Society, supported by the British Red Cross, to reach 2,000 families with cash transfers and animal kits to help them preserve their animals.

Earlier in the year, the Bangladesh Red Crescent Society, with support from the German Red Cross, activated their FbF system for monsoon floods, reaching more than 1,000 families. An impact analysis demonstrated that investing in cash-transfer programmes in this way can help families to cope with the impacts of flood, and reduce the need to take out high-interest loans or sell valuable household items. Meanwhile the Togo Red Cross activated their own FbF system for floods twice.

At the global level, the Climate Centre continued supporting the engagement of new partners in advocacy and technical support for FbF, including the Belgian, Danish, Finnish and French Red Cross.

The Malawi, Philippines and Solomon Islands Red Cross led dialogues at national level with their governments for the design of FbF systems for droughts, floods and storms.

The German government continued to be at the fore of advocacy for investment in FbF, especially at the first FbF dialogue platform in Asia hosted by the Vietnam Red Cross in June, and in October in Berlin, when Germany also announced support for the first FbF window under the IFRC’s Disaster Relief Emergency Fund. Rolled out in May 2018, this window focuses on funding of early actions that are elaborated in a protocol submitted by a National Society, including positioning of relief stocks.

In the academic arena, the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) funded two projects – ‘Towards Forecast-based Preparedness Action’ and ‘Forecasts for Anticipatory Humanitarian Action’ – generating case studies on FbF in Mozambique and Uganda, and Kenya’s system for drought warning.

The Climate Centre’s work to understand and communicate how climate change is (or isn’t) affecting risks associated with extreme-weather events hit its stride in 2017 with eight studies of extreme heat, cold, rainfall and drought.

One of the highlights of the year’s work on attribution came when climate scientists – after a three-day conference in Nairobi – issued a detailed study of the Kenyan drought. Covered widely in local media, it said there was a detectable climate signal in the atmospheric temperatures behind the drought but no strong influence of climate change on rainfall.

The conference brought together scientists, policy-makers and practitioners who have been working on extreme-event attribution in India, Ethiopia and Kenya. The conference highlighted the importance of communication, even when no climate change signal is detected, and also emphasizing the role that vulnerability and exposure plays in determining the impact of an extreme event.

Following one of the most destructive hurricane seasons in the past ten years, the World Weather Attribution (WWA) partnership also found that rainfall associated with Hurricane Harvey in Houston, Texas was made roughly three times more likely due to climate change. The partnership highlighted how population growth, urban growth, and ageing water-management infrastructure exacerbated the impacts of this storm. The resulting paper was selected as a highlight of 2017 by the journal Environmental Research Letters.

A study of drought in Somalia did not show that climate change influenced the probability of the event, but La Niña increased the likelihood of reduced rainfall and explained about a third of the rainfall deficits.

Maarten van Aalst commented: “While we cannot blame climate change for this drought, the study points out that the high natural variability of rainfall in Somalia could mask underlying trends.

“This underscores the key humanitarian message, that we must keep up the pressure to act earlier, be more agile, and advocate for more flexible funding in fragile, conflict-affected countries.”

At the BRACED annual learning event in Entebbe, Uganda we heard a multitude of inspiring stories of building resilience on the ground in Africa and Asia. Partners from 13 programme countries shared their successes and challenges through a learning marketplace, a film festival and a range of interactive sessions. Their experiences show that it is possible to help the most vulnerable people stand up to the growing pressures they face, but that these changes take time.

Twenty-six webinars and discussion forums were offered to BRACED partners and the public, reaching more than 1,200 people. We explored topics such as sharing climate information on mobile phones and reflected on the drought in Africa. We assessed the climate-related drivers of the drought, which included La Niña, and the Indian Ocean Dipole, and drew lessons from forecasts and actions taken.

Humanitarian and development actors, donors and forecasters indicated that lessons from previous droughts had resulted in improved and earlier coordination for response, and more flexible financing to respond to immediate needs.

BRACED piloted a collaboration grant with seed funding to encourage learning across different partner organizations, supporting three initiatives that link seven NGO consortiums, including the production of a documentary for national television in Mali. 

For a significant number of people in developing countries, their assets, livelihoods, and their very lives are intrinsically linked to weather and climate. The Climate Centre’s work on social protection aims to help them manage risk in the short term and reduce poverty, especially by making better use of climate information.

In the Sahel last year, in collaboration with the World Bank, we supported the Mali and Niger Red Cross and other stakeholders in exploring ways to link social protection to early action.

In Malawi, we supported the government’s efforts to make social protection sensitive to shocks by supporting an analysis of the country’s social protection system, now a national priority reflected in strategies covering development, resilience and emergencies.

We supported policy-makers’ understanding of links between social protection and climate risk management, including forecast-based action, as part of our BRACED engagement.

In collaboration with the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) we created a game (see below) on bringing a resilience lens to social protection and humanitarian aid. We expanded our networks and collaborated with National Societies and other partners, including risk financing and insurance concerns. 

The year 2017 offered valuable opportunities for the Climate Centre’s work linking science, policy and practice, including consolidation of recent innovations such as our collaboration with the hydropower sector.

In May 2017, the Climate Centre convened a two-day workshop on managing flood risk at the World Hydropower Congress in Addis Ababa, being held for the first time in Africa.

We consolidated other work on climate risks with hydropower, and with support from the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR) laid foundations for scaling up FbF downstream from dams worldwide.

With the German Red Cross and other partners, the Climate Centre contributed to the development of FUNES, a self-learning algorithm for forecasting floods that links early warnings with financing; it was tested during the 2016 floods downstream from Togo’s Nangbeto dam.

In February the Togo project received a Global Innovation Award at the World Government Summit in the UAE.

Last year, we believe, our input helped streamline Togolese Red Cross community preparedness triggered in September, with dam operators communicating frequently with humanitarian and government colleagues.

With George Washington University, GFDRR and other partners we have set up online mapping tools to identify structures likely to be flooded by dam discharges.

Our virtual reality experiences, meanwhile, continue to be featured at global events and are used by partners including the German Red Cross and the World Bank, as well as in as article in the Australian Journal of Emergency Management describing VR on FbF in Togo and Arctic sea ice.

In collaboration with young Red Cross volunteers from the Pacific and artists, we created a VR experience blending words and satellite imagery that was presented at the Statutory Meetings in Antalya, Turkey, as well as at COP 23.

At the cutting edge of technology, we explored augmented reality for visualizing climate-risk data, developed in collaboration with the design team at VISYON.

A Year Without Your Seasons is a promising new dialogue about changing climate risks: an interactive format that begins with personal stories of how, for example, milder winters are leading to the loss of cultural identity in some places.

Our contributions on geoengineering included a journal article and a new game shared at the Climate Engineering Conference in Berlin.

We are collaborating with University College London to assess the opportunities and challenges of machine learning for climate risks, and supporting the IFRC innovation team on humanitarian finance.

The great newcomer last year was the use of flash mobs to draw attention to important humanitarian issues. As temperatures hit 43 degrees Celsius in Delhi, a unique five-day training experience showed young Red Cross volunteers and staff how to stage flash mobs for heatwave awareness – much more effective than traditional leaflets, was the verdict afterwards.

The Climate Centre’s work on games continues to grow and our resources are now easily available on our updated games page. We have created new games, infused learning and dialogue processes with existing games, and spent time reviewing the effectiveness of these methods.

Examples include Master that Disaster, developed for FAO, that lets players experience how climate-sensitive social protection works; A Buzz about Dengue was developed to create awareness about the causes and consequences of dengue fever; Piloting the Perils was developed for NASA to highlight the role of earth observations in assessing disaster risk.

Flash mobs, games and other tools supported learning and dialogue around the world. Research for the project ‘Adaptation at Scale in Semi-Arid Regions’ has included our approaches; French Red Cross regional training in the Indian Ocean includes games; and interactive sessions including poetry contributed to promoting key messages at D&C Days. 

The year also saw a marked increase in youth engagement. Together with the Philippines Red Cross, Plan International and the Engagement Lab, we have completed the participatory design of Y-Adapt – a games-based curriculum for young people now underway in Haiti, Indonesia and the Philippines.

We continued with our Taste the Change programme, including a session on the future of protein at the Council of Delegates in Antalya, Turkey, while an evaluation of the effectiveness of the 2016 Handwashing with Ananse exercise in Ghana showed positive impacts.

One of the most exciting developments in a productive year in Climate Centre communications was a field trip to the PfR project areas in Kenya to use drone filming to highlight the severity of the drought there. The Climate Centre crew later flew down to Malindi to visit and film an irrigation project supported by the Austrian and Finnish Red Cross.

Our social-media audience grew apace in 2017 and continues to grow, and we now (mid-2018) have nearly 4,000 followers on Twitter.

The Climate Centre generated nearly three web stories a week (132 in total) on average in 2017 – original material about our programmes, cross-postings of IFRC stories, and reports on non-Movement activity.

In his media engagement, Director Maarten van Aalst continued to be a very effective spokesperson for the Climate Centre, and in some contexts, like COP 23 and the Nairobi risk conference, the Red Cross Red Crescent Movement as a whole.

His direct media engagement included several interviews with The Economist as well as The Conversation news site, Associated Press, Thomson Reuters Foundation, OneWorld magazine, Scientific American, and Netherlands media outlets.

He also spoke at Leiden University at an event to mark the 50th wedding anniversary of Prinses Margriet, one of the founders of the Climate Centre.

FINANCE

The Climate Centre – an independent foundation under Dutch law – remains grateful to its hosts, the Netherlands Red Cross in The Hague, who continue to provide support with human resources and legal affairs.

In 2017, most of the Climate Centre’s income came from the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the UK Department for International Development, and the German Federal Foreign Office and Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development. We were also supported by:

British Red Cross
Danish Red Cross
German Red Cross
Iranian Red Crescent
Netherlands Red Cross
Norwegian Red Cross
Swiss Red Cross.

We are grateful to the New Zealand Red Cross with whom we have shared staff for climate risk management in the Pacific, and to the American Red Cross who we also share staff with.

Other contributors were the WMO, CDKN, FAO, UTC, ODI, WFP, the Natural Environment Research Council, the World Bank, and the European Commission.

Below is an overview of our income and expenditure for 2017, with 2016 data added for reference:

The positive balance from 2017 has gone to our mission reserve. More detailed information can be found in our Annual Report 2017.

As always we thank our supporters for their generosity and collaboration.