Imagine not too far in the future – say, about 15 years, by which time the impact of climate change might have escalated tenfold.
The day could come when the humanitarian community would have to provide water and food to millions of people in drought-affected Africa, tend to a few hundred thousand after a cyclone in Asia, and deal with another “Haiti” – all at the same time.
KAN VI DET?
– Do you think the humanitarian community would be able to cope? asked Randolph Kent, director of the Humanitarian Futures Programme at King’s College, London.
Not unless they reinvent themselves.
NY TÆNKNING PÅKRÆVET
But the shift has begun, and long-standing views of how disasters play out are being challenged.
For some time the humanitarian community has tried to address both the ’causes’ and the ‘effects’ of disasters, leading to an increasing number of humanitarian interventions that look more and more like traditional development activities.
Kent and the co-author of the guide, Peter Walker, director of the Feinstein International Centre at Tufts University in the US, predicted the emergence of a “new humanitarianism”, in which the humanitarian agenda would expand to include governance, livelihood, security, social protection, and other development-like activities.
Addressing vulnerability would become the key focus.
