Program Details: Climate Change, Environment and Natural Resources Management

Environment underpins and defines all aspects of human society, from economic development to health to food security. Environmental degradation most strongly impacts poor nations and vulnerable communities, primarily because these places lack the coping mechanisms that normally protect lives and livelihoods. Environmental threats are often increased by climate change, which disproportionately affects the tropical latitudes, home to a disproportionate amount of the world's poor.

Mercy Corps is committed to helping communities mitigate and adapt to the environmental changes impacting their lives. We particularly emphasize helping marginalized populations such as refugees and poor families, and help communities recover from natural disasters, gain access to sufficient water and address conflicts stemming from scarcity of natural resources.

Climate Change — An Urgent Issue

Climate change poses one of the gravest threats to human society. Our future is likely to be shaped by changing weather patterns, and climate predictions today indicate that the most vulnerable communities are likely to be the most severely impacted by changing climate patterns.

Climate change will worsen an already unprecedented scarcity of resources, including water and arable land in some of the world's most volatile and impoverished regions. Diseases are already spreading and agriculture patterns shifting. We need to act now in order to head off avoidable sickness, famine and forced migration.

Mercy Corps' Strategy

Mercy Corps sees climate change as a threat to the communities we serve, but we also view it as an economic opportunity to contribute to global mitigation measures and strengthen communities. We seek to:

• Incorporate environmental assessment and strategy into emergency and long-term development programs in anticipation of climate change threats
• Create businesses that provide environmentally sustainable employment, as well as utilize new market mechanisms designed to reduce carbon emissions and develop carbon credits
• Work with local communities and governments to anticipate the impact of climate changes, reduce their likely effects, mobilize and advocate to take effective action
• Engage young people in environmentally sustainable livelihoods projects, providing viable economic opportunities and reducing potential resource-based conflict

Natural disaster mitigation is also a major focus of Mercy Corps' planning. We work to find ways to lessen environmental damage while giving refugees and displaced populations access to the natural resources they need to survive.

Do No Harm — Putting Mercy Corps' Environmental House in Order

Mercy Corps is committed to being an active part of the climate change solution — not part of the problem. We are making changes that will ensure our headquarters, country offices, transportation, operations, and programs will be carbon neutral. To that end, in 2006, Mercy Corps completed an internal carbon footprint study.

A carbon footprint measures the amount of greenhouse gases (GHG) produced by an individual, a family, an organization, business, or even a city or country. From 1/1/05 to 6/30/06, Mercy Corps produced GHG equivalent to 10,728 tons of carbon dioxide.

In order to reduce this number, Mercy Corps is planning measures to achieve at least a five percent yearly reduction in our carbon emissions. We have switched to renewable energy in our headquarters buildings, will reduce future travel and other energy usage, and are actively exploring greener and more sustainable energy and procurement options.

Mercy Corps' new U.S. headquarters office in Portland, Oregon — scheduled for completion by November 2009 — is being built to meet Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standards, and will also serve as a teaching and outreach center.

Towards Permanent Solutions — Mercy Corps' Environmental Partners

A major role of organizations like Mercy Corps in addressing environmental issues and climate challenges is to educate and advocate constituents about risks, mobilize governments and other partners to take action, and ensure that communities around the world have a voice in decision making.

But no one organization can do this alone. Mercy Corps fosters partnerships with research institutions, businesses and governments to implement climate change measures that work at local community levels. We recently worked with the University of Edinburgh to research relevant climate change adaptations to our programs.

Mercy Corps also directly partners with local communities, where we focus on community-based Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) measures in urban environments — with a particular focus on job creation and income generation for unemployed youth. We also co-chair the InterAction group on DRR, and are the U.S. representative on the steering committee of the Global Network of Non-Governmental Organizations on DRR.