Humanitarian workers forced to make changes to how they work as climate change takes its toll

A top humanitarian charity has revealed how climate change is dealing a “double blow” to life-saving aid attempts, as it simultaneously multiplies health risks and makes humanitarian interventions more challenging and complex to implement.

In a new report, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has revealed how humanitarian workers and communities are managing to adapt to the many and complex challenges of climate change.

Much is known about the ill effects of the climate crisis on human health, but relatively little attention has been paid to the issues facing aid workers helping those who are suffering - until now.

The report, titled ‘A hostile climate: Confronting the challenges of aid delivery in the context of climate change’, is a collaboration between MSF’s Humanitarian Action for Climate and Environment (HACE) Initiative and Heidelberg University Institute of Global Health. It shows the challenges MSF humanitarian workers are facing, alongside patients and communities.

The researchers spoke to 49 humanitarian staff in 30 different countries across the globe and discovered how they are experiencing and responding to a rapidly changing environment.

In their findings, they shed light on the fact that various climate hazards, including changes to water availability and quality as well as food scarcity, are inextricably linked to global warming - and rapidly amplifying humanitarian needs.

MSF explains that climate change is challenging the ability of humanitarians to effectively respond to communities in distress for myriad reasons. 

Some of the most significant are the creation of additional logistical hurdles to humanitarian response via both damaged infrastructure and supply chain disruptions and also by creating conditions which