2025 - present
Communities of Hosts and Refugees Transitioning to Climate Resilience (CHART-CR)

Irit Katz (Co-I) and Gabriel Karubanga (Co-I) Bronze
61 × 46 x 41 cm
Mumok, Wien
© 2019 Artists Rights Society (ARS),
New York Photo © mumok Museum,
Stiftung Ludwig Wien

Fishing on Lake Albert

Kyangwali architectural materiality.

CHART-CR Workshop in Kyangwali.

CHART-CR Workshop in Kyangwali.

About the Project

Project Background:
The conflicts in the East African region are increasing with the latest being the war in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), greatly contributing to an increase in the number of the refugees that are entering into Uganda. By July 2023, the country hosted closely to 1.8 million refugees and asylum seekers from various countries, manly from DRC, South Sudan, and Burundi, among others (UNHCR, 2024). As the largest refugeehosting country in Africa, Uganda has seen and still seeing large numbers of refugees who are fleeing conflicts, arriving to the country and hosted in local cities and towns, and in designated refugee settlement. This reality of displacement and hospitality is intersecting with Uganda’s climate challenges, primarily affecting water and food security amongst the host communities and the refugees living in different forms of settlements including in the districts of Hoima and Kasese, which are not far from the DRC border (OPM Report, 2023).

While the majority of the refugees live in designated settlements, others are considered as urban refugees that live with Ugandans. Both refugee groups, however, contribute to the increasing pressures over Uganda’s climate challenges, particularly in the districts that host larger numbers of refugees, as these are marginalised districts where the level of resilience is very low (Office of the Prime Minister report, 2023). Girls, including youth, and women, particularly experience a high burden of household water management including water-based chores and water insecurity (Aceng, et al., 2025). Women and girls in refugee settlement in Uganda also bear the brunt of the consequences associated with inadequate access to water and sanitation services (Logie et al., 2022). In addition, refugees and the refugee host communities have limited access to financial services that are key in climate change resilience, while also coping together with food insecurities (Semyalo et al., 2024; Revocatus et al., 2022). These intersecting challenges include negative impacts such as increased social fragility that could lead to violent societal conflicts and interpersonal violence sparked in urban areas (World Bank 2019).

These intersectional challenges, which include environmental degradation, the increasing population of refugees coming especially from DRC and South Sudan, coupled with Uganda’s population growth and the rate of urbanization, are together influencing the deteriorating capacity to build resilience to living together with the effects of climate change. Our project ‘Communities of Hosts and Refugees Transitioning to Climate Resilience’ (CHART-CR) focuses on two climate change challenges that particularly impact the lives and livelihoods of refugees and host communities in Uganda: 1) water scarcity (including access to drinking water; to water for growing and cooking food; and water for sanitation and health); and 2) food security (including on-farm and domestic management practices; pos-harvest handling; and agricultural financing and food sustainability). Both issues substantially affect the refugees and the host communities in Uganda, causing increasing fragility, including further environmental and societal uncertainty and instability.

Project objectives:
The CHART-CR project aims to investigate how to best address three interconnected challenges in Uganda, particularly in the Kyangwali Refugee Settlement: (i) the area’s climate-related challenges of water scarcity and food insecurity; (ii) the specific related needs of girls, including youth and women, whom, due to their traditional societal roles, are particularly affected by these challenges; and (iii) the relationship between host and refugee communities, whom their climate vulnerabilities might cause societal conflicts and other related fragilities. The project is being pursued through collaboration between two Co-PIs from the University of Cambridge and Makerere University, and with relevant stakeholders, in order to build resilience related to these challenges through bringing together urban and environmental approaches. In particular CHART-CR is strategically designed to enhance the capabilities of youth, particularly girls and young women, to become decision-makers in building resilience to climate change.

The overall goal of the project was to design a climate change resilience model that can lead to an increase in the resilience of refugee and host communities, especially of youths and young women to the shocks, stresses and future uncertainties resulting from climate change. The goal was achieved through working towards three objectives, examining how to:

1. Increase the awareness and capacity of youth, with the emphasis of young women and youth girls in the project area, to anticipate, plan for and respond to the impacts of climate change;

2. Improve the ability of refugees and host communities in the project area’s districts of Kasese and Hoima to identify, implement and lead actions for climate change adaptation, including livelihoods enhancement and gaining relevant financial skills as a component that support climate resilience; and

3. Enhance the capacity of institutions in building climate change resilience amongst the communities that face climate change effects.

Held in December 2025, a series of workshops were run with partners in Kyangwali to approach these project objectives. The results of those workshops remain preliminary; this page will be updated as results are refined and developed.

Relevance of the project:
This project relates to Uganda’s goals of addressing climate change effects through the National Adaptation Program of Action (NAPA), which include building institutional support and active participation of youth and vulnerable populations including refugees and host communities. The two project areas are of special importance in Uganda. Kasese District borders the DRC and witnessed an increased arrival of displaced people, while facing the challenges of flooding from River Nyamwamba and water scarcity. Hoima District is a home to one of the largest refugee settlements in Uganda, Kyangwali, located in proximity to oil wells, consequentially witnessing high levels of displacements and land grabbing, while an increase to populations of both refugees and hosts contributing to environmental degradation.

Preliminary Findings (further analysis in progress)

Four Key Challenges were identified through the workshops, held in December 2025:

1. Lack of communications between refugee and hosts
2. The need to share knowledge agricultural knowldge between hosts and refugees
3. Food, water, land scarcity
4. Climate change and large number of refugees are compounding each other.

TThe relationships between these challenges and pathways for resilient interventions are being developed and analysed currently.

Collaborators

College of Agricultural and Environmental Studies, Makerere University
Department of Architecture, University of Cambridge

F

Funding

Mastercard Foundation
Cambridge Climate Resilience and Sustainability Research Fund, University of Cambridge
Cambridge-Africa

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