VEHA
Guidance
Guidance
Virtual Environmental and Humanitarian Adviser Tool – (VEHA Tool) is a tool
to easily integrate environmental considerations in humanitarian response. Field Implementation guidances are useful for the design and execution of humanitarian activities in the field.
Identifying environmental dangers can save lives of affected populations and humanitarian workers. Addressing secondary environmental impacts is part of an effective emergency response. Every emergency responder has a role in identifying acute risks.
Populations facing food security and livelihood failure due to humanitarian crises typically depend on fragile ecosystems, whether local or remote. Further assessment is required to determine if local or displaced loss of biodiversity is accelerating as a result of the emergency or humanitarian response. The integration of environmental issues in the nutritional assessments will ensure that environmental harm is reduced or eliminated and environmental benefits are maximized. When assessing environmental issues, understanding the specific context is critical to avoid negative impacts.
At the initial assessment stage, it is crucial for livelihoods project planners to understand the range of livelihoods activities that are practiced by the disaster-affected communities and to what extent these livelihood activities are dependent on natural resources. Identifying environmental hazards can save the lives of affected populations and humanitarian workers. Addressing secondary environmental impacts is part of an effective emergency response. Every emergency responder has a role in identifying acute risks.
Integration of environmental issues into livelihoods assessments will ensure that environmental harm is reduced or eliminated and environmental benefits are maximized. When assessing environmental issues, understanding the specific context is critical to avoid negative impacts.
Most pressing is the fact that climate change and environmental degradation are leading to escalating disasters and vulnerability, calling for radical change across all sectors and systems. For the humanitarian sector, mandated with saving lives and reducing suffering, examining and mitigating its own footprint on the environment should be a clear priority.
A gender-sensitive approach to livelihoods programming means an understanding of different skills, needs, vulnerabilities, and responsibilities of affected women and men and adolescent girls and boys.
It is important to assess and analyse the various needs and capacities between these different gender groups as well as possible cultural limitations and their impact on the environment.
Air pollution
Eutrophication
Climate change
Loss of biodiversity and ecosystems
Natural Resource Depletion
Soil pollution
Soil erosion
Water pollution
Coastal erosion
Deforestation
Desertification
Saltwater intrusion
Water depletion
Needs assessments can have some environmental impacts from vehicle emissions and potential damage by vehicles to local drainage, watercourses, and potential solid waste pollution.
Needs assessments should look out for environmental impacts associated with malnutrition:
If livelihoods are closely linked to natural resources (e.g., people are fishermen or farmers versus shopkeepers), then it is important to assess the baseline for the natural resources. The baseline is essentially the starting point from which to measure change. For example, if a community reported catching an average of 6.2 tons per year of a certain species of fish between the period 2000 and 2008 and only 4.3 tons of fish in 2009, it can be said that the 2009 catch is lower than the average for the baseline period. When evaluating the baseline for a natural resource, it is useful to be aware of the “shifting baseline syndrome.
Other impacts that can be caused by livelihoods, that should be assessed, including drought or flood; deforestation to supplement failing livelihoods; significant depletion of local wildlife; over-abstraction of water; water and soil pollution; agricultural chemical pollution, and effluents from logistic activities.
Needs assessments can have some environmental impacts, which should be identified and minimised so they don’t contribute to the underlying drivers of the humanitarian crisis. These can include vehicle emissions of greenhouse gases, potential damage by vehicles to local drainage, watercourses, and potential solid waste pollution.
Needs assessments should look out for environmental impacts typically associated with malnutrition. These include:
Drought or flood or other crisis and conflict over natural resources which are frequently associated with food insecurity/livelihood failures; deforestation, significant depletion of local wildlife and over-abstraction of water due to unsustainable coping strategies and cooking practices; water and soil pollution from food waste, chemicals (pest management) and effluents from logistic activities.
Environmental impacts undermine the short- and long-term effectiveness and sustainability of livelihoods programming outcomes and can exacerbate existing or introduce new environmental challenges. This can also lead to a loss of biodiversity, degradation of the environment impede future recovery efforts as well as diminish community resilience.
A key concern from overlooking environmental considerations during programming is the increase in future vulnerability of the targeted area to hazards, such as plague, pest, and disease. The provisioning capacity of local ecosystems can also be diminished, leading to future challenges for food, water, and energy provisioning. Programming activities that do not properly manage (or encourage/facilitate proper management of) waste streams, pollution can also lead to public health risks through vector transmission and/or pollution.
Climate change acts as an environmental threat and impacts a multiplier in livelihoods’ programming. Climate change is increase the frequency and severity of climate-related hazards (such as droughts, floods, storms, and extreme temperatures). Environmental degradation is worsening the adverse impacts of disasters and aggravating vulnerability conditions. Programming needs to acknowledge potential risks, and exposure should be reduced while increasing resilience to climate variability and change. The capacity of the local environment to provide key services, such as resource provisioning or natural protection against hazards, should be safeguarded.
Understanding the coping mechanisms and strategies the people use to survive, allows for an adequate design of livelihoods assistance. This means that when the actions that the people perform are known, strategies can be successfully implemented to avoid damaging effects on the environment. For example, as a first resource for fuel, people may start to cut down trees or clean up forested areas to keep livestock. Both actions negatively affect the environment and increase the risk of erosion and possible flooding events in the future.
To integrate environment into rapid/detailed assessments:
Include an assessment of potential waste and pollution from nutritional assistance, transport, and logistics.
Assess disease vectors from waste piling, poor solid and organic waste management and poor sanitation, unclean water, and poor hygiene practices.
Assess unsustainable rates of natural resource depletion, including deforestation.
Assess land and soil degradation, loss of biodiversity, and damage to ecosystems.
Assess opportunities to mitigate environmental impacts through assessments and proper management.
Assess climate change projections to understand their multiplier impact on Nutrition programming.
To integrate environment into rapid/detailed assessments,:
· Include environment in remote analysis.
· Define main trends and criteria to be taken into consideration.
· Include environment into remote analysis will help to define the environment core indicators to assess and monitor prior to conducting any assessment. Integrate environmental considerations into Sector indicators or the sources of verification used to monitor sector indicators. Collect and analyse representative data to establish rates of acute malnutrition, infant and young child feeding in order to deliver sufficient and adequate quantities of supplies and avoid accumulation of supplies.
· Conduct environmental screening (refer to NEAT + tool and/or Cedrig light )
· Identify local environmental sensitivities and stress and the potential environmental impacts of their intervention and options for generating environmental benefits/enhancements.
· Identify nutrition strategies, assets, and coping strategies, considering their effects on the environment.
· Invite environmental actors to participate in sector assessment. This will improve the assessment of crop, tree, and livestock diversity in the area of intervention. This will raise the identification and understanding of factors and cause for unsustainable coping strategies. As well as identifying potential adapted to local context solutions.
· Identify usual patterns or behaviors related to the extraction of natural resources as coping mechanisms and how these have changed as a result of the crisis (if they were happening before and were part of the culture and customs of the communities).
· Investigate and understand the coping mechanisms that have negative effects on the environment in the short and long term in order to facilitate the design of transition mechanisms to less damaging actions.
· Pay attention to communities’ perceptions of environmental issues and concerns. Facilitated needs assessment with communities. An exploratory process to understand a community’s needs, including but not limited to food security; would be led by communities rather than being based on a survey.
· Establish communication channels with the communities in order to verify existing sustainable coping mechanisms that can be replicated or enforced to strengthen their positive effects.
Rapid assessments should include assessment of potential waste and pollution, transport, and logistics. Remote analysis methods can be used to assess environmental factors. Assess disease vectors from waste piling, poor solid and organic waste management, and poor sewage management. Programme activities to effectively address these impacts and reduce vector transmission and/or pollution. Environmental screening tools can be used (refer to NEAT + tool and/or Cedrig light ).
Assess unsustainable rates of natural resource depletion, including deforestation to inform the selection of alternatives. Invite environmental actors to participate in sector assessment. This will raise the identification and understanding of drivers of unsustainable coping strategies as well as identifying potential contextual adaptations. Assess land and soil degradation, loss of biodiversity, and damage to ecosystems to identify and mitigate impacts and fragilities. Pay attention to communities’ perceptions of environmental issues and concerns. Use participatory assessments to understand a community’s needs, including but not limited to Livelihoods. Assess livelihood activities’ opportunities to mitigate environmental impacts through assessments and proper management. Assess climate change projections to understand their multiplier impact on Nutrition programming.
In addition to providing emergency livelihoods support, particular focus should be given to livelihoods recovery, strengthening, and diversification. The potential environmental impacts of these activities should be assessed, they may increase drought or flood, or conflict risk. Displacement and other humanitarian crises may be compounded by issues such as poor sanitation, poor hygiene practices, lack of clean water, unsustainable use of natural resources. The protection, restoration, and improvement of the natural environment and strengthening of community norms and values should be mainstreamed throughout the program cycle.
Including environment in remote analysis will help to define the environment core indicators to assess and monitor prior to conducting any assessment. Integrate environmental considerations into Sector indicators or the sources of verification used to monitor sector indicators.
Identify financial, physical, social, human, and natural assets available for livelihoods. Include environment markers into the livelihoods baseline to be monitored throughout the entire programme. Identify the hazard context, the risk factors, besides the vulnerability conditions and existing coping capacities.
Include environmental expertise within the project assessment and design team. For example, avoid no new species introduction as an element of a livelihood project. If a new species must be introduced, conduct research or consult experts in order to determine if the species has the potential to escape the target project area, threaten other species, and cause environmental harm. Beneficiaries should be informed and trained in ways they can minimize threats from nonnative introduced species.
Identify the vulnerability context related to pre-existing conditions, trends, and seasonality. As an example for gender pre-existing conditions, define what are the livelihoods roles of women and men, boys and girls, and how have these changed in the crisis? How do other aspects of diversity affect livelihoods and their impact on the environment? Who has lost what? Are there social or cultural restrictions affecting livelihoods choices that can have a detrimental impact on the environment? What barriers exist to accessing viable environmentally friendly livelihood opportunities?
Involve a wider range of agencies:
1. Involve national and local environmental actors in needs assessment planning and analysis. Ask for their help in identifying parameters to assess;
2. Include environmental actors and community organisations with environment-related interests in key informant interviews and organisations involved in natural resource management in community consultations and focus group discussions;
3. Seek advice from global sector environment communities of practice, where these exist;
Data sources and identifying risks:
4. Make use of satellite and remote sensing data – check for environmental issues in the area of intervention that might directly or indirectly worsen humanitarian needs (the UNEP/OCHA Joint Environment Unit has a Remote Environmental Assessment and Analysis Cell which can be activated for major emergencies);
5. Use secondary data such as reports on environmental determinants of health, air pollution, deforestation, water quality, waste management, mining, agricultural pests, and similar. Disaggregated data from other sources such as clinic/hospital admissions can tell you a lot about environment and its relationship to vulnerable groups;
6. Identify potential environmental risks, including those from the natural environment as well as human or industrial activity. Make use of environmental assessment tools (e.g. NEAT+) and risk maps ; (Especially considering areas of risk in urban or semi-urban settlements.)
You should consider the potential environmental impacts for each of the identified activities. Meanwhile integrating environment into WASH assessment from the beginning will avoid multiple assessments (limiting “assessment fatigue” from the affected population)
For contextualization, relevant assessment questions could be:
· Which are the main environmental problems in the country/region/community (water scarcity, other)?
· Are there sensitive/protected areas in the nearby area (watercourses)?
· What are natural resources traditionally used for? Do male and female users have different priorities?
To assess negative impact specific environmental related questions could be:
· Does the project impact directly on the local environment, specifically on previously identified main environmental issues? This could be the overuse of scarce water resources or the cutting of trees for construction works.
· Does the project impact indirectly on the environment? (For example use of material brought in from other areas, causing unsustainable harvesting of wood in these locations, or the risk of deforestation as a result of increased population?
Taking a comprehensive approach:
7. Consider people’s coping strategies, the effects that these could have on the environment, and the reaction that they could generate from host communities or local authorities;
8. Consider the relationship between environment and security, for example in contexts of informal economies, conflict, competition over natural resources (land, air, water, soil, crops – access and rights to these), disaster risk (e.g. erosion, floods, landslides, etc.) and any specific issues which might affect indigenous or ancestral populations and their cultural heritage (e.g. cemeteries);
9. Many environmental issues are gendered, due to men and women’s roles in society, their relationship to natural resources, the spaces available to them and activities that they adopt during emergencies. Consider a joint approach to mainstreaming environment and gender
The shifting baseline syndrome occurs when each generation of evaluators accepts as a baseline the stock size and species composition that occurred at the beginning of their careers and uses this to evaluate changes. So an evaluator who starts his or her career in 1985 might set the baseline at the 1980s levels, whereas the evaluator who starts a career in the 2000s might set the baseline at the 2000 levels. The problem with this gradual shift of the baseline is that it can lead to the gradual acceptance of the slow disappearance of species that form the basis of natural capital assets.
Strategic Environmental Assessment – Learning from Recent Experience and Challenges – WB-2012 – http://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/729811468331017746/pdf/728950ESW0whit0200ENV0SEA0pub0final.pdf
# of environmental impact assessments conducted addressing livelihoods’ issues
# of focus groups conducted as part of participatory assessments that integrate food security and livelihoods and environmental issues
Mitigation and prevention of environmental damage
Environmental enhancement
Specific focus groups during assessment for women, men, and children.
Involve national and local environmental actors in needs assessment planning and analysis.
Ask for their help in identifying parameters to assess;
Include environmental actors and community organisations with environment-related interests in key informant interviews and organisations involved in natural resource management in community consultations and focus group discussions;
Seek advice from global sector environment communities of practice, where these exist;