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Spotlight: Responding to climate change impacts in East Africa

Intensified drought and flooding hit the East Africa region hard, causing massive humanitarian needs. DRC Standby Roster is increasingly dedicating support and deployments to climate-related response efforts and anticipatory action in the region.

Posted on 25 Mar 2025

The East Africa region is prone to natural hazards. Recent years have seen countries heavily affected by flash floods, severe droughts, wildfires and cyclones. Such extreme weather events cause death and devastation as well as damage to agriculture, leading to economic losses and risk of food insecurity. Thousands of people are forced to flee their homes, many of them not for the first time.

While extreme weather events in East Africa are common, it is well established that effects of climate change are driving an intensification and increased frequency of climate shocks and stresses. Floods and droughts are intensifying, and storms are becoming more devastating. The number of internal displacements triggered by disasters has risen nearly sixfold across Africa in the last 15 years reaching 6.3 million in 2023. This increase is partly due to the growing number of people exposed and vulnerable to hazards. In 2022, 70 per cent of refugees and asylum seekers fled from highly climate-vulnerable countries, many of which are in the East Africa region.

The Danish Refugee Council (DRC) Standby Roster is increasingly prioritizing support to humanitarian response efforts related to natural hazards and effects of climate change, currently with strong representation of deployments to UN operations in East Africa.

The region is severely affected by crises, and the drought and flooding hits already vulnerable people the hardest. Helping them here and now as well as finding solutions together with local stakeholders to mitigate effects of climate change in the longer run is the right thing to do and in line with DRC’s commitment to respond to the global climate crisis and environmental degradation.

/ Maria Dyhr, Operational Lead of the DRC Standby Roster.

At the forefront of climate action

Based on an increase of requests from UN partners for experts within the fields of climate change impacts and sustainable energy, the DRC Standby Roster conducted a targeted recruitment of members with these profiles in 2023. Today, there are three DRC Standby Roster deployees with environmental and energy expertise currently on mission in the East Africa region. One of them in Stanley Njau Wanjiku, deployed as Environmental & Climate Crisis Advisor to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Mogadishu, Somalia.

A key ambition for the operation is for Somalia to be at the forefront of implementing the six priorities of the IASC Climate Crisis Roadmap launched in June last year. The roadmap represents a collective commitment of the humanitarian community to proactively address climate-related challenges, and Stanley Njau Wanjiku is leading the implementation and mapping of the activities under the roadmap areas in Somalia, a country heavily affected by climate shocks.

“Somalia is among the few countries taking bold steps to implement climate actions because of its high vulnerability to drought and floods – exacerbated by cyclic conflict and displacement. I am proud to be part of this important work and look forward to see our actions make a difference for thousands of people affected by climate shocks,” says Stanley Njau Wanjiku.

Stanley hopes that operations in other countries in the region and even globally will be able to draw on the experience from the roadmap implementation in Somalia.

Promising first steps

Two other DRC Standby Roster deployees also working within the fields of energy and climate in East Africa have recently arrived at their operations.

One has joined WFP Uganda as Energy for Food Security Advisor to help strengthen the operation’s focus on sustainable energy and assist with project implementation, for example by advising on energy-efficient cooking for school feeding programmes in the Karamoja region.

The other deployment is supporting UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency’s Regional Bureau in Nairobi, Kenya with guidance on integrating climate-related considerations intro protection responses – both at a strategic level and by providing operational support and oversight to 11 country operations in the region.

In addition to these deployments dedicated to energy and climate issues, there are also DRC Standby Roster deployees with other primary responsibilities who step in to address humanitarian needs caused by natural hazards when their assistance is needed.

A recent example is the support provided by deployee Muhammad Imtiaz Anjum, Emergency Specialist with UNICEF Uganda, after the heavy rainfall and landslides that hit Bulambuli district in Eastern Uganda in November.

While the mentioned deployments are only initial steps in the DRC Standby Roster’s increased engagement on sustainable energy and climate-related challenges, their impact and relevance confirm the timely decision to dedicate deployments to these thematic areas.

We look forward to continuing our support and partnerships to respond to the great humanitarian needs caused by climate-related crises in East Africa and other places in the world.