Greening the Humanitarian Shelter and Settlement Response

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“The humanitarian sector has a collective responsibility to take environmental and climate action, address the environmental dimensions of emergencies, reduce the environmental impacts of humanitarian operations, and respond to the growing humanitarian needs related to climate change.”

IASC Guidance on Environment Responsibility in Humanitarian Operations

Humanitarian shelter and settlement responses often require a rapid and large-scale mobilization of resources, such as shelter materials and essential household items as part of an emergency response. However, humanitarian shelter and settlements responses can increase risk of negative environmental impacts, including through the overuse of natural resources (for example, through deforestation), the use of plastics (including standard emergency shelter materials, and packaging of relief goods) or the extensive generation of CO ₂  from transport needed to quickly deliver aid to crisis-affected communities.  Those can result in additional, long-term harm to crisis survivors and local communities.

For more than a decade the Global Shelter Cluster advocated and supported country shelter clusters to mainstream environmental considerations, including climate change, into humanitarian shelter and settlements operations and provided training and technical support to partners. Much of this effort is provided via the Cluster’s  Environment Community of Practice  (ECoP), which works closely with partners at global, regional and local levels to support improved environmental approaches in humanitarian shelter responses.  These efforts have been financially supported by key donors including ECHO and USAID, as well as by UNHCR, IFRC (as co-lead agencies) and other partners.

Grants to support the GSC efforts on greening the humanitarian Shelter and Settlement Response   This document provides an overview of the work by the Global Shelter Cluster to green shelter assistance in the period between 2021 and 2023, under the grants provided by ECHO and USAID/BHA.

The ECHO grant was managed by UNHCR on behalf of the GSC, from July 2021 – June 2023. ECHO provided 650 000 Euro for the grant with partner contributions bringing the total value to US$ 1.47 million. Broadly, the grant activities focused on three workstreams, supporting:

1.       The development of tools and processes for global shelter partners to improve ability to ‘green’ their responses. 2. Production of environmental research and advocacy to support country-level shelter responses to make greener and climate smart programming and material choices. 3. Country-level shelter clusters to effectively design and implement greener and climate-smart shelter responses.

USAID/BHA awarded a 2 million USD grant to the Global Shelter Cluster via IFRC (Oct 2021 – Sept 2023) for a range of activities aimed at strengthening humanitarian shelter coordination and improving localization, advocacy and settlements-based approaches broadly aligned with “greening” efforts at country level. The grant supported evidence-building and technical advisory services in both conflict and disaster contexts on greening the humanitarian shelter and settlements response.

Results and outputs of the grants Both grants enabled the Global Shelter Cluster to implement activities at global and at country levels.

At global level, those included coordination with global partners on greening efforts and contributing to processes led by UNHCR, IFRC and ICRC on new specifications of the most frequent shelter-related non-food items (NFI), such as tarpaulins and blankets, aiming to reduce the CO ₂  footprint as well as the use of virgin plastic for those shelter and non-food items by approximately 30 % per year.

The development of tools, such as the Solar Energy Advisory Tool (SEAT), which is described below, as well as trainings and global awareness raising on environmental considerations were prioritized through the grants. The additional resources enabled the GSC to prioritize environmental and climate-change issues, through advocacy and communication, and also in several large-scale events, such as the European Environment and Energy Forum, the Humanitarian Network Partners Week, the GSC Annual Meeting and others, in close cooperation with partners such as the Joint Initiative for Sustainable Humanitarian Packaging & Waste Management.

 To directly support country clusters and in close cooperation with partners, trainings on environmental tools were conducted in selected countries and Environmental Country Profiles (ECP) and Shelter Response Profiles (SRP) were developed. Through the participatory development of these products, the evidence base was strengthened, new partnerships and knowledge was created and the GSC successfully advanced commitments to “green the Shelter response”. In the coming years, field cluster and country-level partners will be supported to implement the recommendations of the profiles thereby continuing to both improve and mainstream grassroots knowledge and capacity on a range of environmental issues.

An overview of the main products developed with the support of the grants are outlined below.

Shelter Response Profiles

Shelter Response Profiles (SRPs) are designed to increase the understanding of humanitarian partners on existing shelter designs in a specific country context and inform on relevant key issues for shelter and settlements interventions. The Shelter Response Profiles, documenting existing and traditional shelter methods, support humanitarian programming on how to (re-)build shelter utilizing existing practices in the local building cultures, materials, and methods. 

Under the grants, the Global Shelter Cluster partner  CRAterre  produced Shelter Response Profiles (SRPs) in  Burkina Faso ,  Nepal ,  Somalia ,  North West Syria ,  Venezuela  and  Yemen .

Environment Country Profiles

Environmental Country Profiles (ECP) provide a compilation of information which is important to understanding the nexus of the environment and humanitarian shelter and settlements assistance. An Environmental Country Profile provides a critical resource which Shelter Cluster partners and others providing humanitarian assistance can use to identify and address possible negative environmental impacts for disaster or crisis affected populations. The Profiles for conflict-affected countries, developed by  World Wildlife Fund (WWF) , include suggested actions to improve humanitarian response. For non-conflict countries, the Profiles, developed by  IFRC , help to plan disaster preparedness actions, and help to inform first steps when a disaster occurs.

The Global Shelter Cluster has recently published Environmental Country Profiles for  Bangladesh ,  Cameroon ,  DRC ,  Honduras ,  Mali ,  Madagascar ,  Nepal , North-West  Syria ,  Timor Leste , and  Yemen . All Profiles can be found via this  link .

Tools, Trainings and Checklists

In cooperation with one of our academic partners, the Eidgenoessische Technische Hochschule Zürich  (ETH Zürich) , a tool was developed that provides users with information and options to determine the most suitable options for solar energy in different contexts. The  ETH – Global Shelter Cluster Solar Energy Advisory Tool  is for use by GSC partners for early decision-making  by providing information on household-level energy needs, excluding cooking. The tool does not require specific knowledge on energy systems and is designed with a double function: as a simple project-based assessment of solar energy options, and a capacity-building tool, embedding key information and reference on energy and sustainability.

The GSC supports dissemination of the Shelter Methodology for the Assessment of Carbon ( SMAC ) tool, originally developed as a contribution of BRE to the Global Shelter Cluster. Follow-up work on carbon footprint monitoring and quantifying the environmental impact of shelters and non-food items is underway in collaboration with the Luxembourg Red Cross, UNHCR, Climate Action Accelerator, ICRC, the Joint Initiative and others. The GSC also supported the ECHO-funded Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) efforts by expanding the number of shelter partners with NEAT+ skills by conducting awareness and training events on NEAT+. These efforts included online training and briefings (e.g., Mali), field-based training (Far North Cameroon), remote and in persons short trainings (e.g., Yemen), half-day trainings (e.g., Türkiye and NW Syria Hub). Efforts continue to promote and support the use of NEAT+.

The GSC, through its  ECoP  (Environment Community of Practice), has also developed an environmental impact scorecard, a guideline on how to quickly assess the anticipated environmental impacts of shelter items, using agreed scoring criteria such as carbon footprint, recyclability, lifespan, packaging, etc. With the support of the ECHO grant,  guidance notes  for NFIs, applying the Environmental Impact Scorecard, has been  piloted in Syria . 

Guidance Notes The GSC developed practical and short guidance for country Shelter Clusters on “ Mainstreaming environmental and climate change considerations in HNOs & HRPs”.  In addition to this, the Environment Community of Practice (ECOP) produced guidance on “ 3Rs for Shelter Components”,  introducing options for reusing, repurposing and recycling shelter materials for common emergency and transitional shelter materials. An overview of different products on greening efforts can also be found  here . The GSC also makes products and guidance of other actors available for its stakeholders, including the “Joint Initiative for Sustainable Humanitarian Assistance Packaging Waste Management’s” Guidance on  reducing plastics in packaging , with whom the GSC’s Environment Community of Practice works together closely.

Advocacy

Funded via the ECHO and USAID grants, the Global Shelter Cluster participated, in cooperation with partners such as the Joint Initiative for Sustainable Packaging Waste Management, in different events to increasing awareness of and enhance capacity on environmental considerations. This participation included the following events:

·         Humanitarian Network Partners Week (April 2023),

·         Environmental Emergencies Forum (March 2023),

·         Latin America and Caribbean (LAC) Shelter Forum (February 2023).

·        During the Global Shelter Annual Meetings in 2022 and  2023 , the GSC introduced its efforts to a wider audience, including Shelter practitioners, researchers and academia, and donors.

The GSC SAG underlined its continuous engagement with environmental protection through a jointly endorsed  Statement on a broad set of actions for fostering environmental protection and climate change mitigation  (June 2023). After the GSC’s statement on the reduction of  single use plastics , this Statement is a first of its kind in the humanitarian sector and will inform the GSC and its partners’ actions on reducing the environmental impacts of humanitarian Shelter response for the years to come. It is one element for advancing the implementation of the IASC Guidance on Environment Responsibility in Humanitarian Operations, complementing many others and supported by humanitarian organizations and donors.

Conclusion The GSC has made significant progress in environmental mainstreaming, supported by the financial support of two major humanitarian donors, ECHO and USAID/BHA and in collaboration co-lead agencies partners. The IASC guidance underlines that “Enhancing environmental responsibility and greening humanitarian operations is a relatively complex endeavor, since many humanitarian organizations operate in challenging contexts across multiple countries.” It is only through partnerships between all actors in the humanitarian system, that the environmental impacts of humanitarian responses can be reduced. The GSC will continuously prioritise efforts in the coming years, building upon the innovative work and processes developed to date, to support country-clusters and partners.