Advocating for people affected by crises is central in humanitarian work. Relief workers have seen first-hand the need for early warning systems to avert the worst impacts of disasters, supporting people suffering losses and damages, and helping communities recover better and build resilience to future crises.
Martin Griffiths, the UN Under-Secretary-General for , explains the importance of addressing climate change within the humanitarian context.
Question: What are your priorities at COP27?
Martin Griffiths: I was in Somalia not long ago, and it's facing famine. And it has the highest urbanization rate in the world because the pastoralist lifestyle and livelihood and way of life in Somalia doesn't work anymore, given the successive failures of the rainy seasons. How much climate finance finds its way into Somalia? It's almost nothing.
And that's the story across Africa. So I’ve come here with that very strong pitch on advocacy, and also in support of the Secretary General's strong pitch for climate justice, and for early warning.
Question: Does the humanitarian need more funding to respond to the worsening impacts of climate change?
Martin Griffiths: I think the humanitarian community should be pitching hard for finance - not only for primary humanitarian activities, but for resilience; for the impact that development funding can do in places like Somalia, Pakistan and the Sahel.
We should be arguing for climate money, not necessarily to go to us and certainly not to go to us first, but to go to others, because if there aren't those investments in resilience, and alternative livelihoods, you will never see the back of the humanitarian efforts. We're gonna be there every year.
And if you look at Somalia over the last decade, this is now the third incidence of the threat of famine. There's almost certainly going to be famine there this year and we're back where we were. If we don't want to have another one next year or the year after - resilience has got to be the pitch that we make.
Question: How are humanitarians pushing for early warning systems?
Martin Griffiths: We have in the last couple of years been working very hard on something which is called anticipatory action. It's essentially acknowledging the fact that for certain kinds of natural disaster - floods, typhoons and so forth - you can, with a certain amount of confidence, predict when they will come. When that disaster strikes, the communities have their options readily in hand, before they have to leave home and walk to the nearest town.
There is enough research which shows that if you invest money in early action, based on sound, scientific early warning, you save a lot of money. And more importantly, perhaps you give agency to the communities that are going to be affected by the disaster that's coming their way because you give them the choice whether to move or not, whether to sell their animals or not, whether to leave home or not.
You get the money to them early; you get them food stocks if that's what's needed - money particularly because these days in humanitarian programmes around the world, cash has become increasingly a dominant feature of how you deliver.
Question: What is your message on loss and damage?
Martin Griffiths: There's an extraordinary inversion between the people who have created the loss and damage, and the people who are paying for it through their livelihoods and their lives.
The Secretary General has made it very clear that he's fully in support of loss and damage. Of course, we are too, because we've seen where the loss and the damage already exists - and one of the main humanitarian messages on climate is - Don't wait. It's happening now. The damage is today. In fact, it was yesterday as well. So getting climate finance quickly to those who not only need it but deserve it is the prime message that we have here.
Read what other prominent Voices from COP27 are saying about the themes, negations and the way forward.
