Climate Action
OCHA
OCHA

CERF’s Climate Action Portfolio

Climate change is driving global humanitarian needs. Over the first two decades of the millennium, climate-related humanitarian appeals have surged by 800 percent. It is a particularly grave injustice that climate change disproportionately affects people and communities that are least responsible for it. As a further inequity, vulnerable communities affected by violence and conflict rarely receive adaptation funding.

Since its inception, CERF has been at the forefront of the response, allocating over a quarter of its funding to respond to climate-related hazards, primarily in fragile and conflict-affected areas. Recently, this has increased to nearly a third of CERF's annual allocations. 

CERF not only provides much-needed rapid response funding to climate shocks but also spearheads innovative finance solutions to climate-related emergencies. CERF is the world’s largest investor in anticipatory action to mitigate humanitarian impacts before climate-related disasters strike. And CERF is routinely funding life-saving activities that enhance community resilience and adaptive capacities to climate shocks and stresses. For instance, CERF partners often distribute drought-resistant seeds and conduct trainings on climate-smart agricultural practices and technologies during droughts, which address immediate needs but also strengthen the capacity of communities to better withstand future shocks and stresses resulting from climate change.

OCHA launched the CERF Climate Action Account at the 28th Conference of Parties in Dubai in late 2023. The Account provides an efficient and impactful avenue for donors to channel additional financing to CERF to: 

  • Support and incentivize life-saving actions that reduce exposure or vulnerability to future climate shocks and stresses, thus helping to build communities’ resilience and adaptive capacity to climate change,

  • Scale anticipatory action for predictable climate shocks,

  • Boost climate-smart humanitarian responses, and

  • Foster innovation and advance best practices in impactful climate action across the wider humanitarian system.

The Account ensures that CERF evolves to keep pace with new demands. Importantly, it helps catalyze the systemic change needed in a reality characterized by increasingly frequent and severe climate disasters. The aim is that as the Climate Action Account grows, it will increasingly drive innovation and generate best practice on climate-smart humanitarian action in fragile contexts, including by building adaptation and resilience of the most vulnerable communities.  

The Climate Action Account is designed within the Funds' mandate and preserves its established, needs-based decision-making processes, and administrative and operational frameworks. 

To ensure additionality of funding to the Climate Action Account, contributions should be funds that would not have been available to CERF otherwise. 

Donate

OCHA is deeply grateful for the strong support the Climate Action Account has received:
DonorAmount (USD)Year
Australia$1,550,0002025
Chad$50,0002024
Denmark$1,407,6582024
Germany$2,637,1312025
Germany$527,4262024
Ireland$5,274,2622025
Ireland$5,470,4602024
Latvia$106,7242023
Luxembourg$530,2232024
Luxembourg$533,6182023
Monaco$104,9322024
Portugal$210,9702025
Public Donations$17,0082025
Total$18,420,412 
Making humanitarian action more climate smart

Within just one year since its launch in late 2023, the Climate Action Account has already been instrumental in strengthening and expanding support to those most impacted by the climate crisis. 

The second CERF Underfunded Emergencies (UFE) Round of 2024 included a first ever dedicated climate action funding envelope of some $10 million, made possible by the Climate Action Account. The envelope supports additional and dedicated catalytic initiatives that build climate resilience and adaptive capacity to climate-related shocks and stresses. Many initiatives are innovative pilots with significant potential for scale up and replication. Successful initiatives support local, national and international climate-related strategies, including National Adaptation Plans and Nationally Determined Contributions. Building on the success of the pilot and incorporating key lessons learned, a similar envelope will be included in the first CERF UFE round of 2025, to reach more people in fragile and violence-affected contexts with improved climate-smart humanitarian action.

Since 2024, CERF funding requests require grant recipients to provide information on whether and how planned life-saving activities support climate-related adaptation and resilience. This will incentivize improved humanitarian programming in the future in support to climate-vulnerable communities. It also allows CERF to facilitate the identification and dissemination of good practices, better track and analyze funding to climate-smart humanitarian action, and can accommodate internal or external donor obligations. 

Additionally, CERF will provide enhanced reporting on its climate action portfolio on an annual basis. As a first step, OCHA in early 2024 published the inaugural annual report on CERF-funded climate action covering 2023 allocations. Future reporting will be enriched with newly captured information on CERF-funded actions with adaptation and resilience benefits as well as through additional climate-relevant indicators, analysis, learning and case studies about CERF’s important niche in responding to the climate crisis. Reporting will also attribute results to the Climate Action Account and demonstrate its added value in strengthening CERF’s overall climate action. 

 

What If?

To introduce the new Climate Relief public fundraising platform, a new campaign was launched by OCHA - What If? is a film created in partnership with the climate impact media platform WaterBear.

Useful links and documents