Explainer Series

Introduction

Government, business, industrial and philanthropic organizations are increasingly integrating climate considerations into their work. Based on evidence, there is widespread recognition that climate change is adversely impacting societal outcomes in multiple sectors, including economic development, health, poverty alleviation, education, and water resources, among others. Climate change is also a key concern for Rotary, whether through its operations, club activities, or grants to projects in all seven Areas of Focus.

To help the proposed Climate Task Force examine the intersection of climate change across seven Areas of Focus, it would be useful to review the Global Grant Guidelines to examine how climate change can be explicitly or implicitly acknowledged and included to strengthen the Guidelines. Following is an illustration of how climate change crosscuts with the various Areas of Focus.

Environment

Rotary’s newest Area of Focus (AoF)supports activities that strengthen the conservation and protection of natural resources, advance environmental sustainability, and foster harmony between people and the environment. This AoF was created out of recognition that the planet is facing unprecedented pressures and widespread concern about the sustainability of economic and social systems that depend on nature’s assets. Global Grants in this AoF would cover projects related to biodiversity, natural resource management, protecting land, water, and related resources, improving the sustainability of agriculture, promotion of responsible consumption, climate change mitigation and adaption, among others.

While climate change is one of the priorities for this AoF, it should be emphasized that climate change is a cross-cutting issue for all seven areas of focus. Therefore, the Climate Roadmap team at ESRAG has been deliberating on the need to explore how climate change could be integrated across all Areas of Focus.

Peace and Conflict Prevention / Resolution

Rotary’s work in this AoF focuses on enhancing the capacity of people and communities to transform conflict and build peace, and by engaging in initiatives that integrate vulnerable populations into society. While conflict may exist in societies because of various reasons, it has been documented that climate change is often a contributing factor through droughts and floods. The International Red Cross Federation has documented case studies where climate change indirectly increases conflict risk by exacerbating existing social, economic and environmental factors.

According to the World Economic Forum, 27 countries, home to 768 million people, are not only most vulnerable to ecological threats, but are also prone to social conflict. It is also important to note that the origins of conflict are not always political; climate change can precipitate food and water shortages which, in turn, exacerbate conflict. 

The work by the International Rescue Committee https://www.rescue.org/ has revealed several examples of the climate change-conflict nexus. Selected examples include:

• Somalia’s drought, leading to food insecurity, juxtaposed by the flash flooding in March 2023 displaced almost half a million people. Read more here. “Human-caused climate change has increased the frequency and severity of droughts, and decades of conflict have significantly eroded the country’s ability to respond to crises.”
• In the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), there is a vicious cycle of violence, disease outbreaks (measles, malaria and Ebola), weakening the country’s capacity to address all issues, including climate disasters as the population is confronted by food insecurity, flooding and landslides. In May 2023 flooding and landslides in South Kivu wiped out entire villages, affecting over 15,000 people. Read more here

Disease Prevention and Treatment

TRF Global Grants aim to prevent and control communicable and non-communicable diseases through various methods, including addressing environmental hazards that may be responsible for the spread of diseases. Climate change related impacts, such as flooding, can often accelerate the transmission of vector-borne diseases such as malaria and dengue fever. Other climate change impacts through rising temperatures also affect the health of populations.

Adverse health impacts attributed to climate change:

• An additional 250,000 deaths per year between 2030 and 2050 (World Health Organization). Read more here.
• A 10-30% increase in the number of people at risk of malaria in Latin America by 2050 (The Lancet). 

Projects traditionally conceptualized prevent and control disease now have the added burden of dealing with climatic conditions conducive to the flourishing of disease. 

Water and Sanitation

Rotary has a long track record in implementing projects aimed at providing universal and equitable access to safe drinking water, linked with sanitation practices that deter the spread of disease. Climate change has reduced access to both the quality and quantity of potable water through several forces at play. Estimates of the number of people without access to safely managed water are upwards of 2 billion. Climate change is putting additional pressure on the world’s water resources. Rising temperatures lead to rapid evaporation in some places with drastic reductions in available water, with the African Development Bank estimating that river runoff in some water basins could shrink by 15% in river basins such as the Limpopo. Elsewhere, extreme rainfall in is causing floods resulting in contamination of water sources. 

Stark reminders of climate-change impacts on water are evident in the following reports:

• Between 75 million and 250 million people in Africa are projected to be exposed to increased water stress due to climate change (IPCC). Read more here
• The United Nations World Water Development Report estimates that climate-induced water scarcity in Africa could affect 250 million people by 2030. Read more here

Maternal and Child Health

The stated purpose of Global Grants in this AoF is to reduce maternal child mortality and morbidity through a wide range of activities targeted at creating conditions for improved maternal and neonatal health as well as treating diseases such as diarrhea, measles and malaria. 

• According to Save the Children, 710 million children live in 45 countries with the highest risk of adverse impacts from climate change. 
• UNICEF estimates that globally almost one billion children are at “an extremely high risk” from climate change impacts through malnourishment, disease, inadequate water and poor sanitation. Read more here
• The World Health Organization estimates that those born in 2020 could face seven times more extreme weather events than those born in 1960. Read report here

Basic Education and Literacy

Rotary involvement in this AoF is designed to improve education for all children and literacy for children and adults. The reality is that climate change can affect outcomes in this area because of several related factors:

• Disruption of schooling because of extreme weather events and disasters.
• Climate-induced nutritional challenges for students.
• Lack of affordability of education (and consequential dropouts) because of financial strain on families resulting from climate-related loss of economic opportunities.

Economic and Community Development

TRF involvement in projects within this AoF aims to reduce poverty and enhance the quality of lives through improved economic opportunities. There are wide-ranging projects, from micro-finance to promote entrepreneurship to creating employment opportunities in diverse sectors. Grant guidelines for this AoF explicitly recognize the linkage between environmental factors and economic opportunity by including eligibility for projects in:

• Empowering communities to develop environmental and natural resource conservation skills.
• Renewable energy and energy efficiency.
• Strengthening communities’ economic resilience to face climate-related challenges.

The broader context for this AoF is:

• The World Economic Forum (WEF) estimates climate change could displace 200 million people within their own countries by 2050, resulting in lost economic opportunities. Read more here
• Up to 100 million people in Asia are at a risk of being pushed into poverty by 2030, mainly due to possible climate change impacts and economic shocks (Asian Development Bank) Read the report here
• The World Bank estimates that climate change impacts will push an additional 32 million to 132 million bank into extreme poverty by 2030 Read the report here

How are Philanthropic Organizations Including Climate Change in their Work?

Philanthropic organizations are increasingly recognizing the importance of addressing climate change as part of their mission to promote social good and environmental sustainability. InterAction, the largest U.S.- based alliance of over 150 NGOs and partners involved in international humanitarian work and mobilizing programming of over $18 billion, has pushed to highlight the importance of climate change. In 2023, the alliance released a second version of it Climate Compact, whereby the signatories of participating NGOs and partners pledge to mainstream climate change considerations in their programming. 

Many major humanitarian and international aid organizations are also addressing climate change through a combination of approaches that include direct investment of billions of dollars in climate solutions or through using a climate change lens for their traditional programming. For example, the Rockefeller Foundation is integrating climate change into its four core focus areas of power, health, food and finance. The Foundation is also collaborating with the IKEA Foundation and the Bezos Earth Fund by launching the Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet (GEAPP) to provide clean energy solutions to low and middle-income countries.  

Other examples of specific involvement of philanthropic organizations in climate change solutions includes:

• Education and awareness about climate change and promoting behaviour change to reduce carbon and ecological footprints.
• Grant-making for projects related to nature-based solutions – e.g. tree planting, clean cookstoves.
• Policy advocacy for effective regulatory approaches to achieve climate change commitments.
• Impact investing – going beyond grants to invest in communities or organizations that generate environmental benefits in addition to financial returns.
• Partnering with other humanitarian organizations, governments and businesses to catalyze projects at a scale that will have a measurable impact.
• Greening their own operations.
• Funding climate change research

Concluding comments

As many reports have demonstrated, climate change is already adversely impacting on the natural environment, human health, and many other societal outcomes. Organisations at all levels are increasingly building climate change into their current and future planning.

In recognition of the seriousness of climate change, as well as other environmental issues, Rotary International added Environment to its key Areas of Focus, with climate change goals included in this new Areas of Focus. However, as shown in this paper, climate change does not conveniently fit into this single Area of Focus. The impacts of climate change will cross over into all seven of Rotary’s Areas of Focus, with the several implications:

1. Climate change will make Rotary’s traditional areas of action more challenging, and may even undermine or delay club projects in these other Areas of Focus. 
2. Climate change may also have impacts on The Rotary Foundation’s District Grants and Global Grants. As an example of the impact of climate change, a solar energy project in the category of Economic and Community Development in Timor Leste was delayed by several months after unprecedented rain and floods washed out roads and communication infrastructure.
3. The Foundation may need to modify the guidelines for each of the Areas of Focus to account for possible disruptions to projects caused by climate change related weather events.

Climate change may also have implications for the Rotary Action Groups, with climate change again making the traditional work of these RAGs more complex and challenging. A positive outcome of this scenario may mean greater cooperation between RAGs.

Topics in the ESRAG Explainer Series

• Climate: What were they thinking?
• How climate change intersects with Rotary’s Areas of Focus
• We need to talk about Climate Part 1. The basics
• We need to talk about Climate Part 2. The science and progress
• What is Rotary doing about climate change?