CARE’s response to the climate emergency reflects the scope and severity of the challenge. Our overarching objectives are to empower poor and marginalised people, particularly women and girls, to take action on the climate crisis at all levels and to build knowledge for global change.

Climate change magnifies the risk of disasters everywhere, particularly in those parts of the world where people are already poor and vulnerable and where extreme weather events tend to occur.

Through our programming, we’re working to make communities more resilient to the significant challenges posed by climate change. To help prevent future disasters, we’ve invested in community-based early warning systems and are helping farmers prepare for changing weather conditions by providing training in drought-resistant crops and adapted farming methods.

We’re also advocating globally for a fair, ambitious, and legally binding global agreement while taking responsibility for our own emissions of greenhouse gases.

Fast facts

• Each of the last three decades has been successively warmer than any preceding decade since 1850.
• Global emissions of carbon dioxide have increased by almost 50% since 1990.
• While global demand continues to surge, renewable water resources are becoming scarcer.
• There were around 13 million hectares of forest lost worldwide each year between 2000 and 2010.

Climate change is key to CARE’s work

People living in poverty, who are the least responsible for greenhouse gas emissions, bear the brunt of climate impacts. CARE is already seeing how climate change is eroding and reversing development gains and exacerbating gender inequality and social and economic injustices across the world.

Climate change is increasingly affecting everything that CARE does and poses a significant threat to our vision of a world of hope, tolerance and social justice where poverty has been overcome and people live in dignity and security. Without urgent action, this could make it impossible for poor and marginalised people to reach a wide range of poverty eradication, food security and sustainable development goals.

CARE is already very active in helping communities adapt to the impacts of climate change and build resilience, and has produced a range of learning tools based upon its experiences, and engages in advocacy and communications.

The impacts of climate change are already destroying livelihoods and aggravating economic, political, social, and environmental inequality. Without urgent action, this could make it impossible for poor and marginalised people to reach a wide range of development and justice goals.

Climate change affects women and men differently

Advocacy

Climate change is increasingly affecting everything that CARE does and poses a significant threat to our vision of a world of hope, tolerance and social justice where poverty has been overcome and people live in dignity and security. That is why CARE must do all it can to ensure that all its actions are part of an urgent, effective and equitable response to climate change.

CARE is already very active in helping communities prepare for and adapt to the impacts of climate change and has produced a range of learning tools based upon its experiences. CARE has also been lobbying governments and decision-makers through targeted advocacy for a number of years. From this work, it’s clear that CARE has a great deal to contribute to the global movement for climate action, namely:

1. Promoting gender-equitable responses to climate change; particularly approaches that empower women and girls and lead to gender transformative outcomes
2. Communicating the links between policy choices and action on climate change in the global North and South
3. Incorporating climate change across the spectrum from humanitarian assistance to long-term development
4. Generating evidence from practical experience on the ground to feed into programme development and policy analysis and advocacy on climate change, both nationally and internationally
5. Making links between policy and action in the global North and South
6. Building the capacity of local organisations in the global South to do all of the above

CARE has a strong presence both in northern countries, where many of the root causes of climate change lie and in southern countries, which suffer most of the impacts of climate change.

Visit CARE’s Climate Change Information Centre for more information.

Taking responsibility

CARE Australia is committed to:

• Reducing Emissions from flights
• Reducing Emissions from office energy use
• Supporting a low carbon and climate-sensitive work culture

CARE Australia offices have prominent Green Teams, and actively encourage their staff to be more climate sensitive and to reduce their carbon footprint. They have also managed to promote a combination of important actions and activities, such as publishing an annual report providing either 100% vegetarian, organic, or sustainably produced catering, promoting climate-friendly food options within the office and trying to limit waste.

FAQs

Learn more about the impact of climate change around the globe: