Climate change

Climate change is an overarching threat to all of Comic Relief’s work. The uncertainty and speed of climate change is beyond the experience of traditional knowledge, leaving poor people ill-equipped to react to it. Also, because poor people have few assets to help protect them from the effects of climate change, they are particularly vulnerable.

However, climate change is not the only determinant to affect livelihoods and the ability to survive: the quality of government services, global aid and trade policy are also major factors.

With this in mind, Comic Relief’s aim is to help and support poor people, who are the least resistant to the effects of climate change.

The challenge

For Comic Relief, the challenge we face is how best to support the poorest and most vulnerable people in today's world, who face a climate change 'triple whammy':

• they didn't cause it
• they are most affected by it
• they are least able to afford even simple measures that could help protect them from the damaging impacts that are already unavoidable.

Pilot programme

In order to inform decisions on how best to meet this challenge, Comic Relief ran a pilot programme during 2009. We developed a three-pronged response:

• to reduce our own carbon footprint
• to play a part in communicating the threat of climate change; and
• to pilot a limited number of international grants supporting climate change mitigation and adaptation.

Seven pilot projects – worth around £580,000 – were made. The different projects aimed to increase understanding and awareness of climate change issues at a community level; to back this up with solid research; engage civil society groups, governments and other decision makers and actors with the issues; and strengthen an African voice in climate negotiations from this base.

The pilot programme and evaluation have provided Comic Relief with a solid basis on which to develop a clear strategy for future engagement. From this foundation, we hope to expand our climate change grant making, collaborate increasingly with other funders in this area, continue to reduce our own carbon footprint and inform the wider public about how poor people are being affected by climate change.

Download Taking the Climate Initiative booklet

At the moment we are in a process of strategy development. Please revisit this page in the following months to hear more about the progress we are making.