Climate Emergency Response

Disaster Relief & the Climate Crisis

The climate crisis means that extreme weather events such as floods, forest fires and heatwaves are becoming more frequent and more severe. In order to be prepared for these humanitarian disasters, new approaches are needed in disaster relief and greater involvement of civil society. CADUS has many years of experience in crisis regions and would like to contribute to making people and structures capable of taking action.

With the Climate Emergency Response Program, CADUS aims to meet this growing need. This involves integrating technical expertise into the disaster relief framework, training a new generation of emergency personnel and helpers for climate disasters and establishing a network that combines climate policy and professional disaster relief.

Our approaches

We are currently expanding our training capacities and making them accessible worldwide through an online learning platform. In the CADUS Academy, we are making all our experience and that of our partners from academia, civil society and humanitarian aid accessible. We make the materials available free of charge.

In this way, we aim to help interested and affected members of civil society prepare for climate-related disasters as a preventive measure. Training covers various disaster scenarios, such as floods, power outages, and wildfires. Through this training, participants can also acquire basic knowledge in areas such as psychological first aid, water treatment, and safety and resilience.

We want to make our knowledge as widely accessible as possible, especially for groups that have often hardly been reached or considered to date. To this end, we train community organizers who can pass on what they have learned to their communities and target groups. We have already tested initial approaches and would now like to further develop and expand these together with partners. We welcome support, ideas and collaborations. Feel free to contact us!

Just as we do with our response teams in war zones, we can deploy quickly to disaster areas to alleviate suffering on the ground and provide both technical and medical support.

For example, we train specialized teams for high-altitude and water rescue and offer training in first aid and evacuation procedures in hard-to-reach areas.

People show solidarity in times of disaster. We know this from our practical work, but also from research.

In the event of a disaster, in addition to top-down organized aid, support is also needed from so-called “spontaneous helpers” or community-based structures that have a deep understanding of organization and defined areas of expertise.

We understand both perspectives and act as intermediaries between disaster response organizations and volunteers on the ground who are not affiliated with any organization.

Less scared, more prepared

As the climate crisis continues to worsen, we are constantly expanding our Climate Emergency Response. To do this, we need your support. We welcome partners, supporters, and donations.

Do you have ideas on how we can expand our work on “Climate Emergency Response,” want to get involved in training sessions, or know of organizations we can network with? Then write to us at info[at]cadus.org!

With the first Soli-Preppen Congress, we provided a forum for professional exchange and the advancement of the field from a perspective of solidarity, humanitarianism, and expertise. Our evaluation and the recordings from the first congress in 2025 can be found here.