For decades, humanitarian response has been defined by abrupt outbreaks of conflict and disaster that demand rapid mobilisation and immediate action to save lives. Funding cycles and humanitarian systems have been built around this model of short-term, emergency assistance. But the climate crisis is reshaping the humanitarian landscape. Not only is it turbocharging the frequency and severity of extreme weather events such as floods and hurricanes, but it is fuelling slow-motion catastrophes such as protracted droughts, steadily rising temperatures, and creeping desertification. These gradually unfolding disasters are destroying livelihoods, eroding resilience, and destabilising societies.
The question for humanitarians is how to navigate these overlapping crises: the immediate, high-intensity shocks requiring rapid action, and the slow-onset events that demand resilience-building and support for preparedness.
As needs spiral and aid funding shrinks, the answer lies in adapting and repurposing existing structures rather than reinventing them. As the following examples suggest, humanitarians can reduce the impacts of rapid-onset and slow-onset climate shocks without creating parallel workstreams or doubling budgets.
1. Expand Humanitarian Monitoring Systems
Humanitarian agencies constantly track potential threats to determine the risk of political unrest or conflict so they can prepare contingency plans and rapidly respond to an emergency. Similar systems can be used to pick up indicators of slow-onset or predictable hazards such as rainfall deficits, pasture decline, or migration spikes. These early warning signs combined with long-term weather forecasts can trigger humanitarian assistance before a disaster hits. In October, for example, when forecasts showed that Hurricane Melissa had strengthened to a Category 5 storm, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs used emergency funding to disseminate early warning messages, carry out evacuations, and deliver aid in Haiti and Cuba before the storm hit. Ahead of a forecast drought in Ethiopia’s Somali and Oromia regions earlier this year, the World Food Programme distributed cash and animal feed vouchers to pastoralist households to help them preserve their livelihoods.
2. Make Cash Assistance Work Before, During, and After Crises
Financial support that allows people to decide for themselves how best to meet their essential needs is often the fastest and most effective way to help families when disaster strikes. But cash assistance can do more than provide short-term relief—it can strengthen people’s ability to cope with future shocks, especially in places where climate impacts are becoming more frequent and protracted. Rather than creating standalone emergency programmes each time a crisis hits, humanitarian actors can work with existing government-run social protection systems that provide regular support to people facing hardship. The United Kingdom has played a leading role in shaping this approach through Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) investments in research, policy leadership, and technical assistance. Through DAI’s STAAR Facility, for example, FCDO has supported governments, donors, and partners to align humanitarian responses with social protection programmes that deliver cash and other measures before, during, and after crises.
3. Adapt Funding and Planning Cycles
Most humanitarian funding is designed to respond to specific emergencies for relatively short timeframes. Moving to longer-term planning cycles and more flexible or predictable funding makes it easier to respond simultaneously to immediate and slow-onset crises. The FCDO-funded Centre for Disaster Protection (CDP) advocates for the use of various financial tools such as insurance and risk pooling to pre-arrange funding for predictable disasters. Instead of scrambling to raise funds after a disaster strikes, financing is released automatically when pre-agreed thresholds related to factors such as temperature or rainfall are reached. Disaster-risk financing can be used to support preparedness for rapid-onset disasters and resilience to slow-onset crises. In the Sahel, for example, where rising temperatures are deepening cycles of poverty and fragility, CDP is working with governments and the World Bank to use disaster-risk financing to scale up country-led social protection programmes. Through cash transfers, community savings groups, and skills training, households are becoming more resilient to the impacts of climate change.
4. Pool Knowledge and Resources
No single actor can meet the challenges of overlapping, climate-driven crises alone. Partnering with local governments, academic institutions, and development actors means that knowledge, data, networks, and resources can be pooled to align interventions and avoid duplication. For example, local governments often manage meteorological services and risk-mapping data that humanitarians can use to trigger anticipatory cash transfers or to pre-position supplies. Meanwhile, closer collaboration with development actors can help bridge the gap between short-term crisis response and long-term resilience building. In Somalia, which has faced years of conflict as well as alternating cycles of severe drought and flooding, humanitarian and development partners, including CDP, have been working with the government to set up a national social protection platform called Baxnaano. It provides regular cash support to some 200,000 vulnerable households as well as emergency cash transfers in response to climate shocks such as floods, droughts, and locust swarms. In fragile contexts like Somalia, combining the expertise and capacity of UN, NGO, development, and government actors has been key to adapting humanitarian responses to climate change.
5. Harness Digital Innovations
Technological tools such as satellite imagery and drone mapping can help humanitarians assess infrastructure damage in the wake of extreme weather events and monitor the progress of slow-onset crises such as droughts. Artificial intelligence is increasingly feeding into early warning systems that help anticipate where the next flood, cyclone, or drought will occur. Used responsibly, digital innovations like these have the potential to support humanitarian responses to climate crises. The Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT), for example, combines satellite and drone imagery with contributions from local volunteers to create open maps that aid disaster preparedness, response, and recovery. In Mozambique, which is highly vulnerable to cyclones, floods, and droughts, HOT’s open maps showing the locations of vulnerable populations and critical infrastructure help NGOs and national agencies strengthen their disaster response and preparedness efforts.
These examples show that by understanding the overlap between rapid and slow-onset crises, humanitarians can respond to both without doubling effort or expense. Existing systems for early warning, social protection, financing, and coordination can become multi-purpose. Effective humanitarian response in the climate era will depend on combining timely response with informed anticipation, all while working within the constraints of today’s budgets.
