Update on the Statement of Commitment on Climate by Humanitarian Organisations

31/01/2022

In December 2020, Groupe URD made a commitment, along with ACTED, Action contre la Faim, ALIMA, CARE France, Électriciens Sans Frontières, Médecins du Monde, Première Urgence Internationale, le Secours Islamique France and Solidarités International, to take the climate and the environment into account more, and to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by 50% by 2030. Here is an update on the progress made by February 2022.

Context

Whereas the international aid sector aims to assist vulnerable populations, NGOs continue to take action in a way that contributes to climate change and environmental damage. And these impacts primarily affect the poorest people. Along with the rest of society, NGOs need to change in order to ‘do no harm’, particularly as the climate crisis is causing more and more humanitarian crises.

Conscious of these issues, the international aid sector has recently begun to make commitments, with the Statement of Commitment on Climate by Humanitarian Organisations, signed by 10 French NGOs during the French National Humanitarian Conference in Paris in December 2020, and then more widely, with the Climate and Environment Charter for Humanitarian Organisations developed by the ICRC and the IFRC and launched in May 2021, which has already been signed by more than 195 organisations throughout the world.

Accelerating change

The Statement of Commitment on Climate by Humanitarian Organisations is ambitious, but is in keeping with IPCC recommendations. It includes quantified objectives for reducing greenhouse gas emissions: 30% less by 2025 and 50% less by 2030. It shows a clear determination to tackle climate and environmental challenges both via the programmes implemented and within organisations themselves.

Different forms of action

On the one hand, each signatory has begun a process to define the path that will allow them to reach the objectives of the Statement, based on their identity and their history, their organisation and way of working, the kind of projects that they implement and their potential for change. There is also collective action by the signatories: NGOs have begun to share ideas, are working together on joint projects to optimise available resources and are coordinating with other actors throughout the sector.

Measuring emissions

In order to know where reductions could be made, it was necessary to be able to measure direct and indirect greenhouse gas emissions (including scope 3). In 2021, 7 of the 10 signatories therefore decided to create a consortium to harmonise the tool that they would use to calculate their carbon footprint by 2022 (the other three either already have tools that are judged to be satisfactory or are currently developing tools).

Specifying commitments

By identifying the main sources of emissions and their relative size, a carbon footprint assessment provides a picture of the existing situation which then allows each NGO to establish its reduction trajectory, specifying a reference date and the exact nature of the reduction (either as an absolute value or in relation to the annual budget).

Some NGOs have begun integrating environmental activities into their programmes, offices, procedures and even their strategy documents. NGOs are also raising awareness among their staff and their partners. Since 2021, several NGOs have been testing tools for measuring environmental impact in their programmes, such as the Nexus Environmental Assessment Tool (NEAT+). This tool has been developed by the Joint Environment Unit and helps to quickly identify the environmental issues of a project in a given area and suggests measures to deal with these. Another tool, Sustain4, developed by a company of the same name, is used to measure environmental impact using 5 criteria: energy consumption, water, paper, waste management and transport. Lastly, some organisations have introduced solar panels in their offices or environmental conditions into their purchasing procedures, or have banned single-use plastics.

Difficulties and needs

Of course, the climate and environmental crises are such that, ideally, we should be going faster and working on all fronts in parallel, but there are three obstacles preventing NGOs from doing this. The first is that they do not have the necessary human, material and financial resources to boldly engage in this significant change of practices, while the number of people who need humanitarian aid has reached record levels in 2022. The second is that they are limited to timeframes that do not allow the long term to be taken into account (humanitarian emergency response and the timetables and procedures defined by projects and donors). The third is that they still lack tools (a consolidated database of emissions factors or methodological guides) or solutions (on local markets, or to reduce indirect emissions, etc.). They also need to consider the different environmental problems that exist in a holistic manner (for example, providing solar pumping to avoid greenhouse gas emissions, but without depleting the water table), and sometimes have to make difficult decisions (in order to avoid deforestation, should they distribute liquified petroleum gas, thereby contributing to greenhouse gas emissions ?). And of course, the primary objective of humanitarian NGOs remains meeting the vital needs of the people they are assisting.

In order to fulfil the ecological ambition of the whole sector, NGOs therefore need support, beginning with financial support to invest both in human and technical resources. Donors also need to revise their procedures for selecting projects and suppliers by including environmental conditions. And lastly, it is clear that taking the role of local actors into consideration more in aid mechanisms will be a key part of the sector’s ecological transformation.

To conclude

Even though the signatory NGOs are working together to overcome this challenge, there is a risk that they will fail if they are not accompanied by all the different actors in the sector. Signing the Statement of Commitment was a conscious and brave risk to take in order to send a strong signal, first of all to their staff, but also, more widely, to the international aid community. We need to continue our commitment and our action to accompany this transformation. We need to come together, inspire our peers, our partners and our donors, and work towards positive change and respect for the environment.