Refugee settlements are often located in fragile environments where local communities already face limited access to land, water, and energy. These areas frequently experience erratic rainfall, degraded soils, and low vegetation cover, making them highly vulnerable to environmental stress. When displaced families arrive, pressure on shared natural resources increases, highlighting the need for approaches that promote sustainability while strengthening social cohesion between refugees and host communities.
A recent webinar in the International Water Management Institute’s Frontlines Learning Exchange series highlighted how youth- and women-led circular innovations can address these challenges in refugee settings. Drawing on experiences from the Gender Responsive Resource Recovery and Reuse project implemented across refugee camps and host communities in Ethiopia, Kenya, and Uganda, practitioners shared lessons on building a circular bioeconomy that supports sustainable agriculture and cleaner energy while placing women’s needs at the center.
Women and young people make up a large proportion of refugee populations, with women often carrying significant caregiving responsibilities. Focusing on women’s skills development was therefore central to the project’s design. Participants learned practical techniques such as home-based food production, integrating trees with crops, and adopting sustainable cooking methods suitable for arid conditions. These practices were designed to be immediately applicable using locally available materials, enabling households to improve food security and energy access from the outset.
The approach emphasized low-cost, locally rooted solutions such as clay-based cookstoves and fuel briquettes made from organic waste and biomass. By combining these techniques with small-scale agriculture, families could generate income while strengthening their resilience and reducing environmental degradation. Access to seeds, planting materials, and the knowledge to reproduce them locally further ensured that benefits could be sustained beyond the life of the project.
Understanding local realities was essential to creating lasting impact. Training programs were adapted to account for age, gender roles, cultural diversity, and language differences within refugee settlements and neighboring communities. Maintaining a strong gender-responsive perspective helped ensure inclusive participation and prevented vulnerable groups from being left behind.
Capacity development proved most effective when local champions were trained to provide ongoing support within their communities. Including both refugees and host community members in these efforts helped bridge social divides, reframing refugees as contributors to local solutions rather than as a burden. Over time, shared training and employment opportunities strengthened relationships and fostered mutual trust.
As some refugee settlements evolve from temporary camps into long-term communities, the need for integrated development approaches becomes increasingly clear. Examples such as Kakuma in Kenya, which was redesignated as a municipality, demonstrate how blending humanitarian support with long-term planning can enable economic integration, local governance, and sustainable livelihoods.
These experiences illustrate a broader shift in displacement response, moving from short-term relief toward development-focused strategies that support livelihoods, environmental protection, and social inclusion. When projects are designed with long-term sustainability in mind, integrate host communities, and invest in local capacity, they can create enduring, people-centered impacts for both refugees and the communities that live alongside them.
