LocationsBringing communities together to solve common challenges
A mutirão for climate investments in fragile contexts
November 6, 2025
Long-term climate resilience for both displaced and host communities supports people to move from dependence on humanitarian aid toward a sustainable, development-driven future.
Photo: UNHCR
When Brazil welcomes the world to Belém for COP30 in 2025, it will do so with the spirit of a global mutirão—the Brazilian tradition of communities coming together to solve common challenges through collective effort. It is this very spirit that the world urgently needs to bring to the millions of people forced to move because of climate change, conflict, and disaster, and to the communities that receive them.
Displacement is no longer a rarity; it is becoming a defining experience of our century. Every day, families lose their homes to floods in South Asia, droughts in the Horn of Africa, hurricanes in the Caribbean and wildfires across continents. Many cross borders, but most remain within their own countries, moving into towns, cities and villages where host communities themselves are struggling with climate impacts and economic precarity.
Too often, displaced people are seen as an added burden rather than as potential partners in resilience and recovery. Too often, host communities are left without the resources and recognition they deserve for the solidarity they show. Both are left behind in global financing, planning and climate negotiations.
When survival and resilience collide
For decades, displacement has been addressed mainly through humanitarian aid, an essential but short-term lifeline focused on survival. Water, food and shelter are provided so that people can endure the immediate shock and stay alive. Climate finance for adaptation, by contrast, is designed for the long haul: to build resilience, strengthen systems and reduce future risks. In this framework, handouts are discouraged, often seen as unsustainable or inconsistent with long-term development goals.
But as the climate crisis deepens, more people are being displaced, often moving into host communities already struggling with climate impacts and fragile livelihoods. The old divide between a “humanitarian emergency” and a “development challenge” is breaking down. In reality they are two sides of the same crisis, demanding a new kind of financing that bridges both.
We recently visited Ethiopia’s Somali region, where the borders with Kenya and Somalia meet, and where the two sides of this crisis are lived every day. The mission was part of a joint effort with UNHCR, funded by the Government of Japan, to strengthen long-term climate resilience for both displaced and host communities. Our co-leadership of the Global Refugee Forum Multistakeholder Pledge advances the humanitarian-development-peace nexus approach in forced displacement. The goal is simple yet transformative: to help people move from dependence on humanitarian aid toward a sustainable, development-driven future.
Here, around 220,350 refugees and 150,000 host community members live side by side, navigating life amidst the extremes of prolonged droughts and sudden floods. Infrastructure is weak, access to clean energy and communications is limited and livelihoods are fragile. And yet, we saw a community defined not only by hardship, but also by resilience and innovation.
In Ethiopia's Somali region refugees and host community members live side by side, navigating life amidst the extremes of prolonged droughts and sudden floods.
Photo: UNHCR
We spoke with women entrepreneurs selling vegetables in flooded markets, youth using digital tools to build businesses, and engineers from a local private company experimenting with banana and papaya cultivation in drylands irrigated by canals first built through humanitarian action. We heard stories of cooperatives that thrived thanks to to energy for irrigation, and others that faltered without such support. We met refugee-led organizations raising awareness on gender-based violence, including one youth leader who runs a TikTok channel to teach cooking. In a livestock market in Allo Dallo, we saw how business is increasingly transacted online, with minimal reliance on cash.
The challenges remain stark. Families risk their lives fetching water from crocodile-infested rivers. Women face violence while collecting firewood. Children lose months of schooling due to climate shocks. And humanitarian aid, which has sustained this region for decades, is rapidly dwindling. But humanitarian assistance alone was never meant to be the solution.
From humanitarian lifelines to climate investments
The stories we heard reflect a broader truth: despite years of contribution from humanitarian partners, foundations and the private sector, the needs are still immense and growing. What is required is not just more aid, but a rethinking of how we invest—so that climate finance, development plans and humanitarian efforts converge to build resilience and reduce aid dependency.
We saw firsthand the mutirão spirit at work—communities coming together to build solutions, often against all odds. But these solutions need scale. They need to be integrated into regional and national climate and development strategies. They need sustained investment, so that short-term humanitarian gains are not lost, and so that displaced and host communities alike can thrive.
At COP30 and beyond, we must commit to a mutirão to address climate impacts and vulnerability in fragile and crisis situations. Together, we can channel climate adaptation and climate finance into the very places where resilience is needed most. And in doing so, we can ensure that both the uprooted and the hosts who welcome them are not left behind but instead become leaders in building a more sustainable and inclusive future.
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