UPDATED: Tufts/HFP: Humanitarian Horizons - a practitioners guide to the future

UPDATED 18.02.10: IRIN highlights guidance on responding to urban emergencies:
Other than urban earthquake preparedness, humanitarian agencies have not yet focused on emergency response in urban centres. The authors of the guide offer tips to humanitarian agencies in this new environment:

1) Programming has to shift from being rural-focused, so humanitarians will now have to reach out to urban planners for effective urban programming

2) Build a knowledge base identifying the differences between urban and rural programmes

3) Re-identify and reprioritize groups most at risk

4) Use of technologies such as cell phone banking and microcredit to deliver aid in an urban context

5) Ensure the creation of better linkages between city and town authorities, and strengthen delivery systems

The blurb:

The Guide "is an attempt to help humanitarian aid agencies look a generation into the future to begin making the necessary changes now to their thinking and organization, to ensure that they continue to deliver the right assistance and protection to the right people in the right ways.

The Humanitarian Horizons project is a futures capacity-building initiative intended to assist the humanitarian sector prepare for the complexities of the future by enabling organizations to enhance their anticipatory and adaptive capacities. Launched in October 2008, the project builds on HFP's analyses of changing dimensions of future crisis drivers, and makes more practical the exploratory futures research conducted under the Feinstein Center's 2004 Ambiguity and Change project.'

Read on! at the Tufts website.

Beautiful panoramic pictures of homes in megacity slums

Some amazing images, linked from this post on the excellent Blood and Milk blog:


See more on the Foreign Policy website. IRIN recently reported powerfully on the problems facing urban slum dwellers in a globalised world; read that article here.

ALNAP resources: urban responses and earthquakes

ALNAP has posted reminders of two of their papers which might be relevant to the response to yesterday's earthquake in Haiti:

For organisations and their staff working in Haiti or preparing to deploy there, the ALNAP Lessons Paper 'Responding to earthquakes 2008: Learning from earthquake relief and recovery operations' may prove of use. This paper aims to provide a distillation of the learning from 29 different earthquake responses taking place over thirty years of humanitarian responses. The main intended audiences are operational decision-makers and relief programme managers working in the response to such sudden-onset natural disasters. Download the paper here

As the worst affected area of Haiti appears to be the heavily populated capital city, Port-au-Prince, the ALNAP Lessons Paper'Responding to urban disasters: Learning from previous relief and recovery operations' may also be of use. Download the paper here.

Follow the thread for further resources contributed by members on the ALNAP website.

Maps: climate injustice and the first humanitarian map to really help aid workers

Here are a few interesting updates from the mapping department:

The Global Dashboard posted two interesting maps offering a view on the world from the perspective of climate change. They show the countries' size according to their fossil-fuel carbon-dioxide emissions and the burden they are carrying due to climate change. Note the startling contrast between 'the West' and Africa-Asia! Both maps come from a recent report of the World Population Fund (UNFPA) on women, population and climate change.

The Aid Worker Daily also posted about the release of the first interactive map that allows everybody to update its contents. This way aid workers have an excellent up to date account of the site they're working in (c.q. Kibera, Nairobi, Kenya). To be expanded soon to other (urban) areas, hopefully!

IDS Bulletin: Climate change meets urban challenges

A very interesting article appeared in last year's IDS Bulletin on climate change. In this article, David Dodman and David Satterthwaite analyse Institutional Capacity, Climate Change Adaptation and the Urban Poor. The analysis the authors present is highly relevant as it focuses on two key issues of BRC policies - climate change and urbanisation.
Next to the impact climate change can have on the urban poor, the authors discuss mainly how authorities can and should respond to the problem. There are also some specific suggestions for international organisations and NGOs. Humanitarian organisations can

• play important roles in climate change adaptation at the urban scale
• provide appropriate sectoral funding (e.g. for urban infrastructure to reduce climate change vulnerability)
• support the development of necessary technical and regulatory capacity
• support adaptation activities directly

IRIN: UNHCR faces urban challenges in assisting Iraqi refugees

A new report by UNHCR, Surviving in the City, reviews the agency's operations in Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, assisting Iraqi refugees in urban areas, IRIN reports. UNHCR encountered many problems in reaching out to these refugees - a majority of them are not registered, so much of the assistance does not reach those in need. The urban environment poses operational challenges to the agency, as it cannot help the refugees as well as in camps.

The vulnerabilities cited by UNHCR include poverty, resorting to dangerous activities such as prostitution, physical and mental disabilities, and female-headed households whose main breadwinner has been killed in Iraq. [...]
The urban setting poses further challenges. For refugees these include high living costs - most of their money goes on shelter, says UNHCR; travelling long distances to reach registration centres, and problems accessing health and education services.

Attempts to adapt its strategies include a text messaging service to alert refugees of new food distributions and the handing out of ATM cards so that refugees can withdraw money locally rather than travelling to a UNHCR point.

ALNAP: Responding to Urban Disasters: Learning from previous relief and recovery operations

The latest ALNAP/Provention lessons paper 'Responding to Urban Disasters: Learning from previous relief and recovery operations' is now available. Download the report as a pdf from the ALNAP website.

ALNAP say:

We have written this paper in response to a common perception in both the humanitarian and disaster risk communities that there is a lack of guidance on disaster response in urban environments - especially if compared with the experiences and materials available on response in rural settings. I hope this paper begins to help fill this gap.

ODI Blog: Realising Urban Potential: Are donors keeping pace with rapid urbanisation?

Urbanisation is characterised by the massive expansion of informal settlements and strains on existing urban work, land, services and infrastructure. For example, the number of people living in slums has doubled in India in the past 20 years and is now greater than the entire population of Britain. Are donor strategies, policies and programmes keeping up with the pace of change occurring in the least developed countries?

From a quick review of ten major international donors we saw little or no evidence that urban insecurities are moving up the aid agenda. What we tend to find is that development itself retains a very rural focus, with the urban focus limited to a series of statements about the challenges of infrastructure, environment and sustainability, and urban governance.

Read more on the ODI blog.

Emergencies in Urban Settings: A Technical Review of Food-Based Program Options

No. 6 in FFP's Occasional Paper Series

The objective of this paper is to provide technical information and lessons learned to support the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and its partners to effectively design and implement emergency food assistance programs in urban and peri-urban settings.

Although food assistance needs in urban and peri-urban areas are expected to require increased resources in the coming years, most experience with food-based programs is in rural areas. Against this backdrop, USAID's Office of Food for Peace Occasional Paper No. 6, Emergencies in Urban Settings: A Technical Review of Food-Based Program Options, examines 11 common food-based programs to highlight advantages, disadvantages, targeting and implementation modalities in the urban context. The paper also presents tools to help determine the most appropriate interventions and approaches for given settings.

Download the paper from Reliefweb.