Connectivity as a lifeline: enabling climate resilience in a disrupted world

By Joakim Reiter, Chief External & Corporate Affairs Officer, Vodafone Group

When floodwaters swept through Germany's Ahr Valley in 2021, families used mobile phones to tell loved ones they were safe. As roads disappeared and fixed communications failed, mobile connectivity became one of the few remaining links between communities, emergency responders and the outside world.

In Mozambique, a succession of cyclones has left communities facing repeated devastation. Between December 2024 and March 2025 alone, cyclones affected more than 687,000 people, destroyed around 118,000 homes and claimed 120 lives.

And in South Africa, the deadly KwaZulu-Natal floods displaced more than 40,000 people and claimed more than 400 lives.

Across these crises, one need remained constant. People needed to communicate. They needed to receive warnings, call for help, contact loved ones, access support and begin rebuilding their lives.

These are very different events in very different countries. But they reveal the same truth. In a crisis, connectivity stops being a convenience. It becomes a lifeline.

Climate change is no longer a distant environmental challenge. It is becoming a daily reality for communities around the world. Extreme weather events have increased significantly in recent decades, affecting 1.6 billion people and causing more than US$2 trillion in economic losses over the past decade alone.

Behind those statistics are families who have lost homes, livelihoods and loved ones, often with little warning and few resources to recover.

As a provider of critical infrastructure, Vodafone increasingly sees the human impact of these events first-hand.

Our engineers have worked to restore networks after floods, storms and wildfires. Our teams have helped maintain communications when power grids failed.

We have seen how quickly everyday routines can disappear when communities come under pressure. Schools close. Roads become impassable. Financial services are disrupted. Access to healthcare becomes harder.

Yet we have also seen the difference connectivity can make.

A mobile alert can provide a family with the warning they need to get to safety. A functioning network can help emergency services coordinate rescue efforts. A digital payment can allow aid to reach communities even when traditional infrastructure has been damaged. A simple phone call can reassure a parent that a child is safe.

What has struck me most is that people rarely think about connectivity during normal times. They think about it when everything else stops working.

That is why climate resilience is increasingly becoming a connectivity challenge.

Today, mobile networks reach far more people than most formal warning systems. Yet around one-third of the world's population still remains unprotected by early warning systems despite 95 per cent having access to mobile broadband coverage. At the same time, many communications networks remain vulnerable to the very climate risks they are helping societies respond to.

The lesson is simple. If societies are to become more resilient to climate change, digital infrastructure must be part of the solution.

This requires investment in stronger and more resilient networks. It requires better coordination between governments, emergency responders, energy providers and connectivity operators. It requires scaling technologies that can improve risk detection and early warning.

And it requires ensuring that digital services such as mobile money and digital payments can continue supporting communities when physical systems are disrupted.

This is not a challenge that governments can solve alone. Nor is it one that the private sector can solve alone. Climate resilience will depend on stronger partnerships, shared responsibility and a recognition that connectivity now sits alongside other essential infrastructure that societies rely upon during moments of crisis.

That is the central conclusion of Vodafone's new report, Connectivity as a Lifeline. Drawing on experiences from Europe and Africa, it explores how connectivity supports communities before, during and after climate-related disasters, and what more can be done to strengthen resilience in an increasingly uncertain world.

For Vodafone, this is both a responsibility and a commitment.

In a climate-challenged world, this means ensuring connectivity continues to work when people need it most. Because when disaster strikes, the true measure of a network is not its speed on a good day. It is whether it remains available on the worst day.

That is when connectivity truly becomes a lifeline.