Humanitarian needs are increasing amid climate shocks, while delivering aid becomes more difficult. MSF is taking action on multiple fronts.
Providing medical and humanitarian aid to people in crisis is getting harder. War and conflict are driving huge population displacements and threatening the lives and livelihoods of millions of people. Poverty and economic inequality create growing disparities in food security and access to healthcare. Yet when 239 million people globally are in need of assistance, governments that used to provide much of the assistance funding have made radical spending cuts.
Amidst these challenges, we are confronting the realities of climate change.
Climate change is intensifying many of the same crises MSF already addresses, and it’s changing how fast, where and under what conditions aid can be delivered. Climate change isn’t a separate environmental issue – it’s a core humanitarian issue.
Put together, these factors lead to complex emergencies in which climate shocks, conflict, displacement, fragile health systems and food insecurity all interact. We need to look squarely at this reality and respond appropriately. For MSF, adaptation means designing humanitarian healthcare systems that can operate despite overlapping crises. It also means scrutinising the environmental impacts of our own operations.
Increasing disasters
We are seeing more extreme weather such as cyclones, hurricanes, droughts, floods and changing rainfall patterns. The increasing frequency and severity of disasters worsens humanitarian crises, undermining food and water security, spreading disease, and deepening risks of displacement and conflict. The vulnerable are hit first and hardest: children, women, disabled and older people, Indigenous people, and displaced persons.
Climate change could cause 250,000 additional deaths per year, from undernutrition, malaria, diarrhoea and heat stress.
Climate change affects people’s health through heat stress, injury and death from floods and storms, malnutrition, water scarcity, waterborne- and vector-borne disease, mental health harms, lost livelihoods and forced migration. The World Health Organization has estimated that between 2030 and 2050, climate change could cause 250,000 additional deaths per year, from undernutrition, malaria, diarrhoea and heat stress alone.
At the same time, climate-related damage to infrastructure and supply chains is making aid delivery more difficult, while harsher conditions are affecting staff health and wellbeing. Damaged roads and infrastructure, disrupted transport and supply chains, extreme working conditions and greater logistical complexity can slow or block access to affected communities.
This has been called the “double blow” of climate change – increasing humanitarian needs while making humanitarian response harder.
Responding through adaptation
Climate change pushes organisations to shift from reactive emergency response towards preparedness, anticipatory action, risk analysis and resilience-building. MSF is responding in two main ways: adapting its operations and reducing its environmental footprint.
On adaptation, MSF is raising awareness, improving anticipation, building resilience into programs and strengthening collaboration with communities. An MSF joint brief with the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change identified several operational approaches to adaptation, including redesigning clinics for heat and flood resilience, modifying disease surveillance for climate-sensitive outbreaks, promoting decentralised or mobile care, developing alternate supply chain planning for extreme weather, adding anticipatory emergency preparedness, and incorporating water security measures.
In Somalia, for example, we’ve integrated climate adaptation into operations by upgrading solar infrastructure at Mudug Regional Hospital to ensure sustainable healthcare and reduce reliance on fossil fuels.
In Kiribati, a Pacific Island nation highly vulnerable to the effects of climate change, we’re working to combat waterborne diseases caused by saltwater intrusion and contamination of wells, and geo-mapping water sources to create a database of water wells to track quality and help the community identify safe, sustainable water sources.
In Mozambique, we’ve rehabilitated water points and built solar-powered health facilities in rural locations to ensure continuous care during emergencies, while in Nampula province, we shifted operations to address the rise in waterborne and parasitic diseases like schistosomiasis and lymphatic filariasis, driven by droughts and irregular rainfall.
MSF has committed to cutting its carbon emissions by at least 50 per cent by 2030 compared with 2019 levels, and it has also launched initiatives such as Humanitarian Action for Climate and Emergency to develop climate services, support research, and build a climate adaptation community of practice.
MSF Australia and MSF New Zealand recently published the 2025 Climate Emergency Report, which tracks delivery against MSF’s global commitment to reduce emissions by 50 per cent by 2030. Although MSF Australia is exempt from mandatory climate disclosures under current legislation, we are aligning our reporting with the national framework and the equivalent international standards. This strengthens comparability, supports consistent oversight and improves transparency.
We have also started speaking out about the health impacts of climate change we’re witnessing in our projects. We’re calling on policymakers in developed countries to do more to decarbonise their economies and to increase their support for climate change adaptation in developing countries. We’re amplifying the voices of communities experiencing the increasing frequency of extreme weather events and increased risks from infectious disease. And we’re sharing their lived experiences and their compelling arguments for why world leaders need to do more.
The urgency of addressing climate change and its impact on people’s health is getting lost in the public conversation. But we are committed to confronting this crisis head-on and doing everything we can to respond effectively and with humanity.
Simon Eccleshall
Head of programs, MSF Australia