MSF and Communities Adapt to Climate Change Challenges
Climate change is having devastating consequences for human health. A new report from MSF’s Humanitarian Action for Climate and Environment (HACE) Initiative and Heidelberg University Institute of Global Health describes how MSF humanitarian workers, patients and communities are experiencing and responding to a rapidly changing environment.
Drawing on interviews with 49 humanitarian staff in 30 countries around the world, the report, 'A hostile climate: Confronting the challenges of aid delivery in the context of climate change,’ details how rapid and slow-onset climate hazards, changes in water availability and quality, and food scarcity linked to climate change are amplifying humanitarian needs.
It also describes how climate change is challenging humanitarians' ability to respond effectively to communities in distress. It creates additional logistical hurdles to humanitarian response, such as damaged infrastructure, supply chain disruptions, and conditions hazardous to mental and physical health.
“In March [2022], there was Cyclone Gombe here, which created big problems at the community level. Some communities were isolated, and the MSF team was confined to one place… the bridges had collapsed, so we couldn't move the team from one region to another.” – MSF humanitarian worker, Mozambique.
Climate change, therefore, deals a “double blow” to life-saving humanitarian aid by simultaneously multiplying health risks and making humanitarian interventions more challenging and complex.
But, as the report reveals, MSF teams are beginning to adapt to this scenario alongside the communities in which they work. The humanitarian staff interviewed described both real and imagined efforts to adapt MSF and communities to the realities of climate change, including raising awareness, anticipatory action, resilience-building, and fostering collaboration.
“I think we’ve got the opportunity to… refine our way of working. In Madagascar for example… doing data driven e-prep [emergency preparedness]… and surveillance, not just for infectious diseases, but of things like rainfall or crop yields, and food insecurity and malnutrition, rather than waiting for the kids with severe acute malnutrition to start turning up.” – MSF humanitarian worker, Switzerland
In general, the research finds that adaptive measures remain quite limited in scale and scope within MSF and the community—especially when considering the considerable current and expected impacts of climate change. Scaling up adaptation efforts, then, represents a significant opportunity to strengthen humanitarian efforts and safeguard health.
“Many communities and organisations remain vulnerable to the escalating risks presented by climate change, because the response does not measure up to the needs,” says Léo Lysandre Tremblay, Lead of MSF’s Humanitarian Action for Climate and Environment (HACE) Initiative and a co-author of the report.
“This underscores the importance of more ambitious action to reduce risk, increase preparedness, and protect people and communities from the impacts of climate change. This report, which describes adaptation efforts employed, observed, and imagined by MSF teams, may offer ideas and inspiration to this end.”
The research described in the report was conducted to understand better how MSF humanitarian workers, patients, and communities are experiencing and responding to climate change and to adapt MSF’s operations more strategically to meet the challenges of the moment. MSF is sharing its findings in the hope that they assist other organisations in reflecting on the health impacts of climate change on their practice and identifying strategies and actions to minimise the impacts of climate-related health threats.
MSF's emergency response team travelling by boat to reach a village in Johi Town that is still cut-off by the water. The MSF team has set up a mobile clinic for flood-affected communities in Johi Town, Dadu district. Photographer: Zahra Shoukat / Location: Pakistan / Date: 26/09/2022
Given the poor road infrastructure, extreme weather conditions severely limit people’s access to health centers and make it difficult for our teams to reach communities. A situation that often demotivates people to visit health centers before their condition worsens. Photographer: Coralie Mulliez | Location: Madagascar | Date: 27/03/2024
MSF and Communities Adapt to Climate Change Challenges.docx
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Jane Rabothata
About Doctors Without Borders (MSF)
Doctors Without Borders (MSF) is a global network of principled medical and other professionals who specialise in medical humanitarian work, driven by our common humanity and guided by medical ethics. We strive to bring emergency medical care to people caught in conflicts, crises, and disasters in more than 70 countries worldwide.
In South Africa, the organisation is recognised as one of the pioneers of providing Antiretroviral Treatment (ART) in the public sector and started the first HIV programmes in South Africa in 1999. Until today, the focus of MSF’s interventions in the country has primarily been on developing new testing and treatment strategies for HIV/AIDS and TB in Eshowe (Kwa-Zulu Natal) and Khayelitsha (Western Cape).
In Tshwane, we run a migration project, and we offer medical and psychosocial care to migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers, who struggle to access public health services under South Africa’s increasingly restrictive.
Previously we offered free, high-quality, confidential medical care to survivors of SGBV in Rustenburg.
To learn more about our work in South Africa, please visit this page on our website (www.msf.org.za). To support MSF’s work:
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