Fund scope

Rohingya refugees began to flee from violence and persecution in Rakhine, Myanmar in August 2017. As of January 2022, more than 920,000 were living in and around the district of Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh with 51% of the refugee population being children, 52% female, 4% older people, and 1% people living with disabilities.

The Government of Bangladesh, in response to the first influx of refugees, cleared 2,500-hectares of protected forest to erect 33 refugee camps replete with the necessary infrastructure. However, lacking access to alternative fuels for cooking, refugees were forced to use upwards of 700 tonnes of firewood daily. This increase not only created additional stress on the environment and increased tensions between host and refugee communities, but it markedly increased food insecurity and the risk/incidence of gender-based violence (GBV) amongst women who collect firewood. Regarding the environment, deforestation and infrastructure development has increased the frequency of soil erosion, siltation of streams, loss of soil stability, landslide and flooding, decreased soil and water quality, impacted agricultural productivity, and negatively augmented tension between refugees and host communities over natural resources.

The Safe Access to Fuel and Energy (SAFE+) programme was created as a response with stakeholders working to meet the immediate needs of refugee and host communities by providing practical, safe, and sustainable cooking fuels. This aspect seen as an essential factor for improving food security for refugee and host communities, as well as mitigating and reversing deforestation losses, rehabilitating affected environments, and fostering greater social connectedness between communities through livelihoods and skills development initiatives.

And although numerous gains have been made since 2018, equal access to income and livelihood opportunities is still limited for those living in camps and host communities. Cox’s Bazar is one of the most socioeconomically disadvantaged regions in South Asia and vulnerable to multiple climate-related hazards such as landslides, cyclones, flooding, high winds, and drought. Natural resource degradation and unsustainable human practices intensify the rate of biodiversity losses, water resource scarcity, ecosystem dysfunctionality. This all affects agricultural production and increases livelihood vulnerability and render rural communities increasingly prone to multiple shocks and degraded resilience. As such, the SAFE+ programme was scaled up to address these concerns through a multi-level model comprised of three priority windows:

• Strategic priority one: access to cleaner cooking energy.
• Strategic priority two: environment and ecosystems.
• Strategic priority three: resilience.

Stakeholders will learn from phase one setbacks and successful actions to contribute to climate action and improve the potential for positive outcomes to result through the implementation of mitigation, adaptation, and resilience measures. Integrated approaches encompass environmental degradation, mitigation, rehabilitation management, livelihoods, and environmentally focused skills-development elements as SAFE+ stakeholders collectively make contributions to the long-term development of Cox’s Bazar through sustainable and ecologically conscious action.

Strategic framework

All three strategic priority issues are crosscutting and allow for longer-term planning horizons to be instituted, where projects can address risk-factors and challenges through collective, scaled-up development programmes. A joint approach allows multiple agencies and partners to work towards common results to facilitate stronger network collaboration, and apply their respective expertise and comparative advantages refugee context.

The SAFE+ Joint Programme supports the coordination of UN agencies under the Rohingya Humanitarian Crisis Joint Response Plan (JRP) and connects existing programming to cover refugee settlements and host communities and promote the optimization of UN efforts to improve government response capacities. Efforts are designed to help refugee and host communities become more climate-resilient and food secure, and lower rates of GBV and vulnerability to disaster, by offering access to cleaner cooking fuel, improving natural resource management, and making green development and livelihoods opportunities accessible to all.

An integrated, multi-level approach covers each strategic priority and effectively contributes to the long-term development of Cox’s Bazar.