Experience shows that environmental projects are unlikely to receive dedicated funding from humanitarian aid budgets at this point in time. It, therefore, becomes all the more important that within sector responses, environmental impacts and vulnerabilities are clearly appraised, understood, and monitored by the humanitarian actors. This will help to ensure continued access to financing that is increasingly tied to environmental and social standards and accountability policies (e.g. Green Climate Fund, bilateral donors)

• Some existing trends and partnerships have laid the foundation for the humanitarian investing market to grow. This non-exhaustive list includes: The World Humanitarian Summit, the High-Level Panel on Humanitarian Financing (which led to the Grand Bargain), and the Global Company for Migration and Refugees. Initiatives such as these added a positive momentum and perhaps a shift in mindset by portraying today’s humanitarian crises as tomorrow’s development challenges.
• By doing so, these initiatives created stronger partnerships between the humanitarian and development actors, donors, and the business communities.
• Individual or collective response management agencies should invest in forming networks for humanitarian investment. These networks would enjoy some non-traditional instruments such as financial intermediary funds, outcomes-based funds, advanced market commitments, and de-risk protection mechanisms.

Eutrophication
Climate Change
Loss of biodiversity and ecosystems
Natural resource depletion
Soil erosion
Noise pollution
Visual Intrusion
Increased intensity of storms/hurricanes
Increased drought/flood

• Unsustainable use of natural resources
• Unsustainable transport and logistics practices
• Unsustainable waste management practices
• Lost opportunities to protect or strengthen environmental resilience

• Nutrition projects can cause environmental harm or expose affected people to environmental risks if their assessment and sustainable actions are not funded. These include ongoing or increased air, water, soil pollution and creation of health risks; harm to flora, fauna, and ecosystems, harming people’s livelihoods, health, and wellbeing and potentially ultimately reducing their ability to remain living in the area; unsustainable management of natural resources; Unsustainable transport and logistics practices; unsustainable waste management practices; lost opportunities to protect or strengthen the environment and support communities in becoming more resilient to environmental risks.
• Successful resource mobilization relies on a strong understanding of the global humanitarian financing landscape together with keen local knowledge based on the mapping of donor presence and priorities. Fundraising and resource mobilization commonly happen simultaneously to the Information Management phase of the response. This is because the results and findings from your information management activities, including but not limited to primary data collection and secondary information review, will inform what may be the environmental considerations your agency should be aware of to prepare financially.
• Fundraising activities for humanitarian responses should learn to advertise or ‘sell’ such initiatives as sustainable investment opportunities, able of generating a direct or indirect capital return to the investing entities. Humanitarian crises often displace contexts of Fragility, Conflict, and Violence (FCV) and Humanitarian Investing (HumIn) seeks to address not only immediate relief activities but instead build resilience and prevention, through recovery activities. These activities can easily incorporate environmental considerations, including, for example, forest and land degradation, water, and land pollution, natural resources management and more.
• A key concern overlooking environmental threats and risks to sector responses lies in the management agency’s ability to portray the activities and services provided as part of the response as sustainable investment strategies that enable investors, beyond the traditional UN umbrella and international organizations, to consider social and environmental factors alongside financial returns.
• While humanitarian organizations normally lack organizational readiness to appeal for funding from the private sector or drown in the overly competitive fundraising environment in and around humanitarian donors, organizations can behave like market catalysts, to develop and de-risk investable opportunities that bring investment capital to the fragility-crisis cycle. Moreover, humanitarians and development organizations play a crucial role in sharing their understanding of the needs and environment of impacted communities. These organizations are also critical in monitoring and evaluating the human impact of these investable opportunities, thus translating the enhancement to social, environmental, and livelihoods conditions of people in crises into market capital returns.

• Assess all nutrition projects to ensure environmental impacts and risks are identified and planned for within budget activities and clearly visible to donors.
• Advocate internally and to donors for environmental funding
• Set aside funds for training, incorporating environmental elements.

• All nutrition sites and activities should go through environmental assessments with clearly funded activities that reduce harm and increase sustainability. Donor environmental policies should be reviewed to demonstrate compliance and go beyond the minimum required. Use your environmental analysis in proposals and reporting. Also facilitate dialogue between humanitarian, development, and environmental donors, since this may lead to joined-up, multi-year funding. In protracted emergencies, a strong environmental analysis may allow you to access development or climate funding that would otherwise not be available for “pure” humanitarian response.
• Many actions can easily be identified and actioned that reduce or prevent air, water, soil pollution and creation of health risks, at low or zero cost – they are often about doing things differently rather than doing additional things.
• Harm to flora, fauna, and ecosystems and subsequent impacts on people’s livelihoods, health and wellbeing, and long term residence in the area can usually be addressed at low cost through funding environmental assessments to inform the design of project activities, Pre-prepared environmental risk assessments of nutrition activities and locations should be submitted and summarised to the managing agent to design appropriate mitigating measures. The absence of these, which will also require previously mobilized resources, can contribute heavily to the degradation of the surrounding environment and impact livelihoods, health, and nutrition.
• Unsustainable use of natural resources can easily be assessed through a low-cost environmental assessment. Alternative sustainable sources can usually be identified at either zero/low additional cost or can be demonstrated to provide much greater cost benefits than depleting local unsustainable resources would.
• Taking time to understand and address unsustainable transport and logistics practices can often save money, or be easily demonstrated to bring significant longer-term benefits that help build the resilience of local markets and local communities.
• Unsustainable waste management practices can be addressed in part at low cost through simple separation and sorting, composting, re-use and repurposing and can be developed into viable recycling livelihoods that can ultimately support nutrition. Failure to assess and build resilience to environmental hazards such as landslides, floods, disease spread, can usually easily be demonstrated to cost donors much more in the long term if not addressed now.
• Apply to relevant funds for environmental funds for humanitarian activities. Note that the CERF Rapid Response Window criteria specifically call for the environment to be considered. Other donors are increasingly asking for environmental considerations to be demonstrated. These are also elements that affect project sustainability, another key criterion in donor funding decisions. Use the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) corporate approach for resource mobilization and funding mechanisms (See resources).
• While humanitarian organizations normally lack organizational readiness to appeal for funding from the private sector or drown in the overly competitive fundraising environment in and around humanitarian donors, organizations can behave like market catalysts, to develop and de-risk investable opportunities that bring investment capital to the fragility-crisis cycle. Moreover, humanitarians and development organizations play a crucial role in sharing their understanding of the needs and environment of impacted communities. These organizations are also critical in monitoring and evaluating the human impact of these investable opportunities, thus translating the enhancement to social, environmental, and livelihoods conditions of people in crises into market capital returns.
• A key concern overlooking environmental threats and risks to sector responses lies in the management agency’s ability to portray the activities and services provided as part of the response as sustainable investment strategies that enable investors, beyond the traditional UN umbrella and international organizations, to consider social and environmental factors alongside financial returns.