Dancliff Mbura is the advocacy and communications manager at Action Against Hunger Kenya. He works to influence policy and resource allocation and is an expert on multisectoral nutrition interventions.
Just four years since the last devastating drought, when five consecutive rainy seasons failed, 3.3 million people in Kenya’s arid and semi-arid counties are facing acute hunger as yet another drought crisis deepens. It is visible everywhere – in the parched riverbeds, weakened animals, and the children, who are too quiet.
Six months ago, the number of people facing acute hunger was 1.8 million. If nothing changes, by August, it will climb to 3.7 million, underscoring the need for urgent aid.
We know the answers. Cash transfers allow families to purchase food in markets that are still functioning. Mobile health and nutrition outreach teams must meet communities where they are, not where facilities happen to be located, which could make them inaccessible. Emergency water provision is essential.
But the resources are not there to address the growing needs. A coalition of humanitarian organisations working across Kenya’s drought-hit regions with the government has estimated the drought response would cost more than 30 billion Kenyan shillings ($232 million). Kenya’s government has released just 6 billion shillings so far.
Reducing the damage
Beyond the immediate response, however, we need to invest in systems that reduce the damage of future drought cycles in this climate-vulnerable region.
Kenya has systems that support the generation of early-warning systems, such as the National Drought Management Authority’s monthly county and national early-warning bulletins with detailed early-warning data. What we need is a means to ensure that information reaches communities in time for them to act on it and make sure they have the resources they need to do that.
One approach could be the establishment of village-level climate change and disaster hubs. These hubs would provide communities with simplified, actionable information, sometimes via dashboards on weather patterns and forecasts, and support them in generating locally relevant, cost-effective early actions.
By engaging communities in this process, the government and development partners can complement these efforts with additional resources where needed. This approach fosters community ownership while simultaneously enhancing resilience to climate-related risks.
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With better technology, including AI-assisted climate modeling, we can generate precise early-warning information. When shared in a timely manner with communities and accompanied by support for early or anticipatory actions, this can help build resilience to frequent droughts and other crises.
For example, with access to early-warning information, vulnerable communities could store water ahead of droughts, switch to short-maturity crops when reduced rainfall is forecast, and move livestock and food stocks to higher ground before floods hit. They could also apply preventative treatments to protect crops and animals from pest or disease outbreaks, and make smarter market decisions, such as selling livestock early before prices drop, to safeguard their income.
Different in scale
I have spent 15 years working on humanitarian response in Kenya. I have seen drought cycles come and go. But what is happening right now across our arid and semi-arid lands – the ASAL counties that cover nearly 80% of the country – is different in scale and in the depth of suffering it is causing.
The October-December 2025 short rains delivered only 30 to 60% of the long-term average, making it one of the driest seasons since 1981. In some areas, rainfall failed almost entirely. More than 90% of open water sources have dried up in most parts of ASAL counties. Families are walking up to 20 km (12 miles) or more just to find water.
Now, as we approach Kenya’s more reliable rainy season from March to May, projections are well below average across the hardest-hit northern counties, and we may be heading into a fourth consecutive poor season. For communities who have already exhausted every coping mechanism they have, another failed season could be catastrophic.
More than 810,000 children between the ages of six months and five years are acutely malnourished. Nearly 117,000 pregnant and breastfeeding mothers are also acutely malnourished. The cycle of nutrition that healthy communities depend on is breaking down.
And yet approximately half of severe acute malnutrition cases are going untreated. Only 24% of the nutrition and health outreach sites mapped across the arid and semi-arid counties are currently functioning.
Impossible choices
The economic devastation compounds everything. Livestock is the backbone of life in these pastoral lands. But in Marsabit county alone, more than 50,000 sheep and goats have died. Mandera has lost nearly 30,000 animals. Milk production has plummeted by 55%. As animals grow weaker, families receive less and less when they sell them. Livelihoods are collapsing in slow motion, and families are running out of options.
That can lead to desperate decisions: more daughters are married off early in exchange for dowry like livestock, a practice that rises sharply in times of crisis. Girls are subjected to female genital mutilation so they can be considered ready for marriage. Children drop out of school as families are forced to move in search of better land.
Every week that passes without a scaled-up response is a week in which children go hungry, animals die, and families make impossible choices. We are at a point where, if we do not act, lives will be lost – preventably.
Not because we lacked the knowledge, not because we lacked the warning, but because we were not able to move fast enough.
The post We must invest in early-warning systems to tackle crises like Kenya’s drought appeared first on Climate Home News.
https://www.climatechangenews.com/2026/03/10/we-must-invest-in-early-warning-systems-to-tackle-crises-like-kenyas-drought/
One of the key expected outcomes from the upcoming COP31 climate summit in Antalya, Turkey, is the launch of a “just transition mechanism”.
This follows years of calls from civil society to support a “just transition” as countries shift towards low-emissions energy systems and away from fossil fuels.
At the COP30 UN climate talks last year in the Brazilian city of Belém parties agreed to establish a “mechanism” to support this goal, called the “Belém-Antalya mechanism” (BAM).
Groups that have championed the BAM want it to act as a central hub on just transitions, providing support for workers and communities around the world.
However, the details of exactly what the much-touted BAM will consist of remain vague, with developed and developing countries disagreeing about its functions and purpose.
Disagreements continued at the UN climate talks in Bonn in June 2026, including on the crucial question of how the BAM will be financed.
Here, Carbon Brief looks at where the idea for the BAM came from, how it could support just transitions and what to expect from COP31.
How has a ‘just transition’ featured in UN climate talks?
A “just transition” is the idea that workers and communities should be supported in the shift to a low-carbon economy. It is a central principle behind the idea of climate justice.
Often, the term refers to those linked to the fossil-fuel industry, but it can also refer to transitions taking place in agriculture, heavy industry and various other sectors.
The concept originated in the 1980s, when US labour unions forged alliances with environmental justice groups. It has since become a key part of international climate discussions.
The preamble to the 2015 Paris Agreement includes a commitment to “tak[e] into account the imperatives of a just transition of the workforce and the creation of decent work and quality jobs in accordance with nationally defined development priorities”.
Bert De Wel, policy officer at the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), tells Carbon Brief:
“The labour movement is very happy with the wide audience and broad political support that the concept has received since its inception in the 1980s. The inclusion in the Paris Agreement, with the reference to the creation of decent work and quality jobs was a milestone for the movement. While other demands have been added…we continue to stress the labour dimension as being central to the concept.”
Three years after the creation of the Paris Agreement, at COP24 in the former coal-mining city of Katowice, the Polish presidency highlighted the issue of just transitions.
The need for carbon-cutting policies to ensure “a just transition of the workforce” that creates “decent work and quality jobs” was included in the “Silesia declaration”, issued by the presidency during the first week of COP24.
While the declaration was only signed by 50 countries – roughly a quarter of the parties at the summit – it was still “noted” in the final COP text.
This helped to drive momentum behind the idea, culminating in formal agreement at COP27 in Egypt to launch a “work programme on just transition” (JTWP).
De Wel says the establishment of the JTWP was a “major step forward” that allowed parties to “speak about just transition in more concrete terms”.
In the years since, negotiators have worked to flesh out the JTWP, with disagreements between parties about what its purpose should be.
Broadly, developed countries would like it to focus on domestic workforces, while some nations want a more global outlook, including support for transitions in developing countries.
The JTWP has proved a challenging negotiating space, with talks at the COP29 summit in 2024 closing without an agreement, in what one observer dubbed a “betrayal”.
However, despite these frustrations, parties at COP30 in Brazil agreed to establish a new institutional mechanism on just transitions, which has become widely known as the BAM. The move was hailed as a “victory” by civil society.
Where did the ‘just transition mechanism’ come from?
In the run-up to COP30, civil society began to push for the establishment of an “institutional arrangement” that would move work under the JTWP from talk into action.
(This was originally called the “Belém action mechanism” by civil society groups, who subsequently updated this to the “Belém-Antalya mechanism” following the outcome at COP30. However, in the JTWP text agreed at COP30 it is only described as a “mechanism”, sometimes also referred to as the “just transition mechanism”.)
Anabella Rosemberg, senior advisor on just transition at NGO umbrella group Climate Action Network (CAN) International, tells Carbon Brief:
“The idea of the mechanism emerged from the collaboration of civil society, trade unions, feminist groups, youth and Indigenous peoples in the UNFCCC.
“It was clear that the kind of activities being run under the JTWP – two dialogues a year and one ministerial – would not support the delivery of just-transition strategies on the ground, so a new approach was developed to get words into action.”
Following the inception of the idea, civil society did “tonnes of stuff to boost it up the agenda”, Dr Leon Sealey-Huggins, a senior campaigner at the charity War on Want, tells Carbon Brief.
This ranged from presenting demands and proposals to different constituents, organising joint letters and writing policy papers, all the way through to designing logos, creating memes and even a song.
These efforts ultimately paid off: during the Bonn climate negotiations in June 2025, one draft text included the idea for a new institutional arrangement. One of the options in the draft text was for a “toolbox, guidance framework, global platform, technical assistance network [or] mechanism”.
![Paragraph 28 of the JTWP text published 25 June 2025. The text reads "28. Options for further implementation of the United Arab Emirates just transition work programme Option 1: Improving existing modalities Option 2: New institutional arrangements [toolbox, guidance framework, global platform, technical assistance network, mechanism] Option 3: Defer decision to 2026"](https://www.carbonbrief.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/11/para28-1024x334.png)
This inclusion was broadly welcomed as a “big win” for civil society groups, although parties acknowledged that more needed to be done to flesh out the idea.
Going into COP30, civil society groups continued to push the idea of creating a BAM, with protests, banners and badges visible around the venue.
Early in negotiations, the G77 and China – a large coalition of developing countries at UN climate talks – put forward their own proposal for a just transition “mechanism”. This, they suggested, could provide technical assistance, support international cooperation and help to foster partnerships in an effort to address implementation gaps.
Their proposal faced initial pushback from developed-country parties including Norway, the UK and others, who opposed it due to concerns that it would duplicate existing systems and require additional funding.
Developed countries also opposed the use of the term “mechanism”, with the EU suggesting an “action plan” as a potential alternative. Nevertheless, the creation of a “mechanism” was included in the final draft text on the JTWP.
This text was formally approved during the COP30 closing plenary to extended applause from many in the hall.
In a statement at the time, Chiara Martinelli, director at CAN Europe, welcomed the decision:
“Delivering BAM was a major civil society win. It creates a coordinated institutional home to drive forward progress on the just transition.”
The decision to develop the mechanism included a request for parties to work over the subsequent year – through to COP31 – on a plan to get things started.
What role could the mechanism play in facilitating ‘just transitions’?
According to civil society, the BAM could help tackle the fractured just-transition landscape by centralising resources and helping to overcome a number of barriers.
Speaking to Carbon Brief, Rosemberg says the just-transition space “lacks coordination and the right kind of support and is quite disconnected from climate action imperatives”. She adds:
“The BAM can play a role in bringing those [people] trying to make just transition happen together, identify gaps and barriers, foster cooperation and accelerate support.”
Civil society has put forward a number of proposals likely to inform the structure of the BAM. Most consist of a mechanism with three parts, which would encompass and expand upon the work that is currently being carried out under the JTWP.
One proposal by a coalition of five NGOs suggests the mechanism is formed of a steering body, a “knowledge arm” and an “implementation arm”.
The steering body would coordinate the work of the two arms of the BAM, including deciding the topics that should be discussed under the ongoing JTWP, which will continue to feature in climate negotiations. They suggest the body would recommend topics that require negotiation when “gaps that require political guidance are identified”.
Their proposal is illustrated in the infographic below, showing the steering body acting as a central hub for work within the BAM.
The final part of the BAM, the “implementation arm”, would act as a hub to enable and coordinate technical, financial and knowledge-based assistance for those pursuing a just transition.
Rosemberg says the vision of civil society is for work to go “beyond negotiators’ dialogues”. She says the BAM could enable the organisation of a “matchmaking platform” to provide support faster, as well as dedicated groups to identify and mobilise financial resources. She adds:
“Finally, through bottom-up identification of barriers, the BAM can also allow a discussion on enabling just transition that is informed by practitioners. The BAM can show that implementation does not necessarily mean taking issues outside of the UNFCCC.”
A separate proposal for the structure of the BAM from the Global Campaign to Demand Climate Justice (DCJ) – a separate coalition of NGOs – similarly proposes three elements. These would be: coordination and coherence; knowledge generation; and international cooperation and support.
Sealey-Huggins, who is affiliated with DCJ, notes:
“If it works in practice, what we’ll see is a cascade of just-transition policies implemented across countries, across sectors in a unifying, transformational moment for justice-centered climate action, and that will be the key to unlocking the transition that’s been missing so far.”
Another proposal for the BAM comes from the Grantham Institute at the London School of Economics. It suggests the three functions of the mechanism should be capacity-building, technical assistance and knowledge-sharing, but it recommends a dual-arm structure comprising a policy arm and an operational arm.
De Wel tells Carbon Brief that while there is “rather broad consensus on the functions”, parties are pushing in “very different directions” on how the BAM will be set up.
What are the financial implications of the mechanism?
Within UN climate negotiations, some parties have raised concerns about the potential cost of the mechanism.
The push to launch the BAM comes at a time when the UNFCCC itself is facing a funding gap, following the US withdrawal. Several other parties have also delayed or reduced their contributions, in response to changes in domestic priorities.
This has led to the UNFCCC cancelling events and not filling vacated positions, as the organisation struggles to carry out its existing functions.