Cuts and shortages in the humanitarian and environmental sectors: the risk of a silent global collapse

Translated by Francesca Valsecchi

In 2025, the international humanitarian sector is facing an unprecedent crisis. Only 25% of the total funding has been allocated to the three main emergences: the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Ukraine and Sudan. The major donors are still the European Commission, the United States and the United Kingdom, followed by Japan and Germany. However, in spite of the seeming generosity, the sector has been reduced significantly. Hundreds of organisations have closed down, while the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has lost between 20% and 25% of its staff, being under growing strain. The concentration of funds for the three main emergencies does not only reflect humanitarian needs, but also the donors’ geopolitical priorities: disregarded areas risk to become fertile ground for regional or non-governmental actors, increasing local instability and the influence of external powers.

In June 2025, the OCHA launched a hyper-priority call for 29 million dollars, an unprecedented attempt to redefine the priorities of national humanitarian plans. The declared aim is to save 114 million lives in areas struck by conflicts, famines, sanitarian emergencies and natural disasters. This figure seems huge in absolute terms, but it is surprisingly reduced when compared to the global spending for defence: only 1% of the military funds set for 2025. This comparison highlights with crude realism the disproportion between resources which are set for the “defensive" global security and those set for human security. The call reflects the growing strain put on humanitarian organisations, which have to work in more and more complex situations: extended conflicts, political instability and climatic vulnerabilities. The shortage of funds has already concrete consequences: many humanitarian organisations have reduced fundamental activities or have closed down, and the most remote areas risk to remain unsupported. In scenarios of extended conflicts, there is the risk of a proper humanitarian blackout, with shortage of food, drinking water, healthcare and protection for millions of civilians. Then, the call is not only a request for funds, but it is also a sign of the structural weakness of the global humanitarian system. The international community needs to reconsider its priorities: if the military spending continues growing without a parallel increase of humanitarian investments, the gap between capacity for action and real needs risks to become unsustainable, with direct consequences on the stability of entire countries and regions. The underestimation of human security is reflected on donor countries too: extended crises abroad generate internal instability through migratory movements, political tensions and economic pressures.

At the same time, the environmental sector is facing a hard and underestimated counterblow, with deep strategical repercussions. According to the UNO, in 2025, more than 2 million people have been living in areas struck by shortage of water, while desertification advances on more than 30% of the lands above sea level, with dramatic consequences on Africa, the Middle East and Southern Asia. Funds and staff shortages do not only concern “green” or conservation projects, but they directly affect the ability of governments and international organisations to deal with climate emergencies, which are getting increasingly intense and frequent: from handling drinking water and containing desertification to protecting communities exposed to hurricanes, floods and drought. These phenomena struck more than 45 million people at the global level in 2024 only, as the last report of the World Meteorological Organization affirms. Without appropriate investments, not only technical capacity gets lost, but a strategic prevention tool is missing too. Climate adaptation operations, from dealing with reservoirs to reforestation and shores protection, are not simple environmental projects: they are international security leverages. Leaving them out means accepting that the lack of resources becomes the spark setting off local or even transnational conflicts. Without handling water, arable lands and food security, a chain crisis can be triggered, destabilizing entire social and economic systems. The FAO estimates that in 2025 more than 60 million people risk acute hunger in Africa and in the Middle East. In Sahel and in the Horn of Africa the combination of extended drought and local conflicts has already forced millions of people to migration, creating regional tensions which threaten the internal stability of the countries, compromising humanitarian supply corridors and transforming the climatic emergency in a proper matter of global security. The reduction of staff and funds in the environmental sector is not a technical or a local problem, but is a factor which weakens the global strategical resilience. Countries which are already weak become fertile ground for combined, humanitarian, climatic and social crises, which spread quickly beyond national borders, influencing migratory movements, energy security and geopolitical stability.

According to the UNO, without immediate action, the consequences of climate changes could generate, by 2030, more than 200 million environmental refugees, with destabilizing effects for entire regions. In this situation, the lack of climatic prevention is not only an environmental problem, but a proper strategic threat for global security, which can fuel conflicts, rivalry and political instability on an international scale.

To conclude, 2025 shows how humanitarian crises, climate emergencies and shortages of resources cannot be considered local or isolated problems anymore. The reduction of funds and staff in the humanitarian and environmental sectors threatens global resilience, increases political instability and conflicts, and increases the vulnerability of those countries which are already weak. If the international community does not realign its priorities, investing in humanitarian security and climate prevention in a well-proportioned way, the consequences risk to propagate beyond crises areas, influencing regional and global stabilities, migration movements, economic stability and geopolitical security. It therefore becomes urgent to adopt integrated strategies, which can combine immediate aid, climate prevention and resource management, in order to avoid that today’s emergencies become tomorrow’s systemic crises.

Mondo Internazionale APS - Riproduzione Riservata ® 2025