FIC + HFP Humanitarian Horizons: tackling future challenges

The Feinstein International Center (FIC) of Tufts University and the Humanitarian Futures Programme (HFP) of King's College London initiated a joint project called Humanitarian Horizons. This project, launched in October 2008, focuses both on HFP's analyses of changing dimensions of future crisis drivers and on making more practical the exploratory futures research of FIC's Ambiguity and Change project. So far four papers by leading experts have been released, which will be incorporated into a "Practitioners' Guide to the Future", to be published in December 2009.

The Humanitarian Horizons project is a futures capacity-building initiative intended to assist the humanitarian sector to prepare for the complexities of the future by enabling organizations to enhance their anticipatory and adaptive capacities. The first step in this process is the exploration of four futures-related drivers widely expected to have an impact on humanitarian crises and responses to them. These four drivers are:

• climate change;
• globalization;
• major demographic shifts;
• drivers internal to the humanitarian community, e.g. technological advances, the "shrinking" of humanitarian space, new actors, changing financing structures and the like.

Dan Smith: Tories to prevent DfID from becoming uppity teenager

After having reviewed DfID's White Paper, Dan Smith tackles the Green Paper that the Conservatives published over the summer. Smith argues that, overall, the Green Paper is conservative in the wrong way.

A few appetisers:

Under the Conservatives, DFID will remain a separate department but be better coordinated with the Foreign Office and the rest of government (pp 56-57). Some may suspect that “coordinated” is a polite term for “subordinated” but the Green Paper authors would probably insist that they are talking about a recalibrated division of labour with the Foreign Office taking a clearer policy lead. Time will tell which version is more accurate but, certainly, the Green Paper offers heart to critics concerned that DFID has become an independent fiefdom with its own foreign policy.[...]

I worry that when the Conservative team criticises what it sees as the NGO culture in DFID, it is the engagement and commitment of staff members at all levels of the organisation that they are taking issue with. And I worry that if they put pressure on engagement and commitment and the accompanying spiky attitudes, NGO-ish atmosphere and casual clothes, they risk replacing those positive qualities with a bureaucratic approach that, in the event and with greater cause, will annoy them even more.

[...] one way a Conservative government will get value for money is by focusing the UK’s international aid on fewer than the 108 countries to whom it goes now. The document rightly abstains from saying how many countries will get it, though it does commit to ending UK aid to China, and it says a Conservative government will strengthen links with Commonwealth countries, implying though not promising more aid to Commonwealth developing countries. [...]

I am intensely pleased that the Conservative Party has committed itself to continuing to expand development assistance. There is much to welcome. But it has not yet done any better than the government – in fact, it has done somewhat worse – in the essential task of shaping a new way of understanding and supporting international development.

Change.org: Climate Change and Conflict

A few weeks back there was a world wide Climate Change Blog Action Day, organised by Change.org. Here are a few links that Change.org's Humanitarian Relief blogger Michael Bear gathered together, all relating to the causal impact of climate change on conflict:

• Conflict in the Age of Climate Change (from the Stop Genocide blog)
• A brief history of climate change and conflict (from the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists)
• Climate change and Conflict (International Crisis Group)
• a map of countries most at risk from violence resulting from climate change (International Alert)

Michael notes:

[T]he issue isn't one of surviving an especially fierce rain or harsh winter, but the cumulative effects of many fierce rains and many harsh winters. Next, climate change alone won't cause conflict but, along with other factors, will contribute to and shape it. It's one variable among many others, such as cultural, economic, or demographic factors. Last, unless a society learns to adapt to sustained climate change, its wealth will decline and its social fabric will weaken with each passing year. But even if a society faces these environmental challenges, a trigger--such as an assassination, extreme natural event, or random act of group violence--is usually required to ignite violent conflict.

Guardian: GM crops to save Africa from disaster?

In a new scientific paper, professor Sir Gordon Conway predicts a catastrophic increase of food shortages in Africa, as a result of the devastating impact of climate change on the continent - the Guardian reported. Africa already suffers to a greater extent than the rest of the world from the effects of climate change, such as rising temperature, more droughts, floods and storm surges.

Conway predicts hunger on the continent could increase dramatically in the short term as droughts and desertification increase, and climate change affects water supplies. "Projected reductions in crop yields could be as much as 50% by 2020 and 90% by 2100," the paper says.

"In certain circumstances we will need GM crops because we wont be able to find the gene naturally. GM may be the speediest and most efficient way to increase yields. Drought tolerance is governed by a range of genes. It is a big problem for breeders of [both] GM and ordinary plants."

Sir Gordon argues that more research into climate change needs to be done. Whereas forecasts all predict increasingly extreme weather conditions, their exact manifestation remains uncertain.

CRED Crunch Newsletter Nov 09: major losses in Asia and S-America C

The November 2009 newsletter from the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) provides a balanced perspective on disaster data from the first semester of 2009.

Although global disaster impact figures in the first half of the year 2009 appeared relatively low compared to the 1999-2008 yearly average, many countries, mostly in Asia and South America, suffered major losses. [...]

The first half of 2009 underlines societies’ vulnerability to climate-related and geophysical disasters. A long road remains to better protect the vulnerable and developing societies.

HPG policy brief: Untangling Early Recovery

The Overseas Development Institute's Humanitarian Policy Group has published a new Policy Brief: Untangling Early Recovery. This document provides an overview of early recovery, in preparation of up-coming HPG research on early recovery, stabilisation and transitions. Its main arguments are that:

• ‘Early recovery’ has functioned as a way to classify and conceive of a broad range of activities and strategies which seek to promote recovery in humanitarian and transitional settings. However, the added value of early recovery has yet to be consistently demonstrated.
• Attention to early recovery is part of a drive to better organise international responses to foster recovery from conflict. Policy-makers should understand the opportunities and tensions presented by different approaches, including humanitarian assistance, development, and stabilisation, peace-building and state-building.
• Policy-makers and practitioners must be specific in portraying problems and proposed solutions; early recovery has served as a catch-all term for very different issues related to recovery.