The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has issued a stark warning and a practical response plan in its 2025 Special Appeal, arguing that millions of people living where armed conflict and climate hazards overlap now face a compound crisis that demands different humanitarian thinking and different financing. With a proposed budget of CHF 175 million, the appeal frames the problem not as separate “security” and “climate” crises but as a single, mutually reinforcing emergency: violence degrades ecosystems and services; climate shocks deepen food and water insecurity; both together erode resilience and push people into harmful coping strategies or displacement. The ICRC lays out targets and operational steps that aim to reach the hardest-to-access communities and to shift humanitarian practice toward climate-smart, conflict-sensitive interventions.
The scale of the challenge the ICRC describes is sobering; The appeal notes that more than 122 million people are forcibly displaced worldwide and that nearly half of those displaced live in countries simultaneously experiencing conflict and serious climate hazards. The document also points out that the ICRC operates in 46 of the 50 countries identified as most vulnerable to climate change and least prepared to adapt, underscoring that the problem is concentrated where institutions are weakest and the stakes are highest.
Practical targets sit at the heart of the appeal. For 2025 the ICRC commits to deliver climate-smart water, energy and sanitation infrastructure to some 30.8 million people, bolster climate-resilient food production for more than 2.2 million, and support at least 250,000 households to improve their overall resilience to environmental and climate risks. The appeal also lists concrete health-system targets, dozens of hospitals and primary health centers to be strengthened through climate-smart design and redundancies, and pledges delegation-level changes in planning and risk assessment so that a significant number of field offices use climate information in programming.
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The paper grounds those targets in dozens of operational examples drawn from recent ICRC work across Africa and beyond. In Mozambique the document recalls the continuing fallout from Cyclone Idai; destroyed health infrastructure, contaminated water sources and salinized farmland, warning that increasingly frequent storms and rising seas are making recovery harder and hunger more likely in a country where the majority depend on agriculture. In Nigeria the ICRC’s approach has linked animal health and livelihoods by training Community Animal Health Workers, providing veterinary supplies and giving small grants to displaced livestock owners so herding livelihoods can be restored without aggravating local resource tensions.
In Ethiopia the ICRC describes a large solarization project in Lalibela that shifted borehole pumping to renewable energy to protect water access in a town of more than 77,000 people. In Somalia, work with the Somali Red Crescent to anticipate floods, distributing sandbags and safeguarding water points, illustrates how early warning and anticipatory action can blunt the knock-on effects of climate shocks on communities already weakened by conflict.
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A central theme of the appeal is that humanitarian action which ignores climate and environmental risks will repeatedly fail to deliver sustainable results or protect dignity. Bann Zahir, the ICRC’s Environment and Climate Change Adviser, is quoted directly in the appeal: “It is only by integrating climate and environmental risks into our operations and decision-making that we can ensure our humanitarian response remains effective, adaptive and sustainable, supporting recovery, strengthening people’s resilience, and preserving dignity amid evolving climate risks.” That sentence encapsulates the operational pivot the ICRC is asking for.
The ICRC also stresses the legal and diplomatic levers available to reduce harm. It underscores the role of international humanitarian law in protecting the natural environment during hostilities, an angle that the organization says must be reinforced through confidential dialogue with weapon bearers, training and the mapping of environmentally fragile areas to exclude them from military operations. This work combines protection and assistance roles: safeguarding water, agricultural land and other objects indispensable to civilian survival not only saves livelihoods but reduces the risk that climate shocks will turn into broader humanitarian disasters.
The appeal is equally candid about barriers. Conflict multiplies the difficulty of delivering services, blocks access to markets, and often places climate-sensitive interventions in politically fraught settings. The ICRC laments that conflict-affected communities are among the most neglected by global climate finance; Gilles Carbonnier, the ICRC’s Vice-President, warns that people “are among the most vulnerable to climate risks and less equipped to adapt” and that climate action is not moving quickly enough to reach them. The document points to the COP28 Declaration on Climate, Relief, Recovery and Peace as a political step forward, but stresses that endorsement must translate into finance, flexible programming, and access on the ground.
From an Africa-facing perspective the appeal is both a field manual and a funding pitch. It emphasizes a multidisciplinary toolbox: combining nature-based solutions with technological fixes; investing in renewable energy for water and health systems; using climate information services to trigger anticipatory action; supporting market-oriented solutions like feed production to sustain livestock; and designing cash and livelihood interventions that reduce environmentally destructive coping mechanisms. It also argues for institutional investments: strengthening National Societies, investing in national meteorological and hydrological services, and building local capacities for climate-smart programming. These are practical priorities that donors, multilateral banks and national governments can act on immediately if they reshape financing modalities to be faster, risk-tolerant and locally led.
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For policymakers and funders the ICRC’s appeal suggests three immediate pivots. First, adapt funding instruments so climate finance can flow into fragile, conflict-affected contexts through simplified, flexible mechanisms that enable anticipatory action and local procurement. Second, invest in resilient public goods; renewable water systems, climate-proofed health facilities and early warning infrastructure, because these deliver long-term public value and reduce humanitarian costs. Third, back local actors: build the technical capacity of National Societies and community networks so that responses are faster, more acceptable locally, and more likely to survive insecurity and shocks. These are not abstract prescriptions; they follow directly from the ICRC’s field evidence and its operational framework for integrating climate risks.
The ICRC’s 2025 Special Appeal is at once a humanitarian plan and a wake-up call. It asks donors, governments and humanitarian agencies to stop treating conflict and climate as separate strands and to instead fund and design interventions that reflect the lived reality of millions who are on the front lines of both. The appeal ends with an explicit call for collective action and with ways to engage, underscoring that a shift in finance, policy and practice is urgent if the most exposed populations are not to be left behind. For those willing to engage, the full appeal and operational details are available here.
