Annual report

ENVIRONMENT
Context
For decades, countless people around the world 
have been living with the risks and vulnerabilities 
imposed on them by a changing climate, and 
these risks continue to rise and evolve.
The changing climate will affect every country, 
but some are more vulnerable than others due 
to their greater exposure to extreme climate and 
weather events, higher susceptibility to disasters, 
and lower adaptation capacities.
In 2022, IFRC research identified 70 countries 
as very highly or highly vulnerable. More than 
half – 37 – were already experiencing complex 
and protracted humanitarian crises, and 26 were 
facing protracted crises that had been ongoing 
for at least five years. Thirty-two countries that 
were classed as either highly vulnerable or very 
highly vulnerable received less than 1 US dollar 
per person in climate change adaptation and 
disaster risk reduction funding (IFRC, 2022).
IFRC data also indicates that in the past ten 
years, 86 per cent of all disasters triggered by 
natural hazards were caused by weather and 
climate-related events. These disasters killed 
at least 410,000 people and affected a further 
1.7 billion.
The 2022 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate 
Change (IPCC) report showed for the first time 
that climate change is already contributing to 
humanitarian crises, with an estimated 3.3 
billion-3.6 billion people living in contexts vulner-
able to climate change.
The IPCC also warns that the humanitarian 
impacts from climate change will become more 
severe, frequent and widespread, combining 
with and worsening other chronic root causes 
of vulnerability such as poverty, social and 
economic marginalization, environmental deg-
radation and protracted insecurity.
The African continent stands out as the most 
vulnerable region in the world under all climate 
scenarios above 1.5 degrees Celsius, and yet 
Africa has produced at most three per cent of 
global emissions. The continent’s vulnerabilities 
are worsened by low levels of socioeconomic 
growth and a high dependence on natural 
resources and weather-sensitive industries. 
This combination of factors raises the risks of 
income loss and increased food insecurity in 
African countries.
In the Americas, food insecurity is also a high 
risk, as the continent experienced loss of 
biodiversity and carbon repositories in 2022 
alongside changes in precipitation – with the 
corresponding threat to agricultural production 
- and the degradation of its oceans and coasts.