meeting the challenges of severe climate-related hazards

The international humanitarian regime remains critical for absorbing and reducing the impacts of shocks and stresses caused by extreme weather-related events and processes, particularly in some of the world’s poorest countries that lack sufficient resources and capacities to respond effectively. Yet many key normative, institutional, operational and resource structures and systems within the international humanitarian system appear insufficient or inappropriate for addressing the multiple and complex challenges to human security posed by climate change, and continue to undermine the system’s global capacities. This paper presents priorities for increasing the effectiveness of the humanitarian regime, including: improved connectedness, consistency, quality, scope and coverage of humanitarian needs assessments; improved flexibility and suitability of humanitarian funding to highly varied and complex situations of vulnerability and need; improved strategic engagement, cooperation and/or coordination of international humanitarian actors with state and other national and local actors; improved standards of international humanitarian engagement in major emergencies; greater attention and support given to the protection and support of livelihoods in humanitarian (including emergency) preparedness, planning and response mechanisms; and prioritization of support for preparedness, planning, early recovery and disaster risk reduction efforts across all areas of humanitarian funding, programming, coordination and monitoring.

1744 R Street NW Washington, DC 20009 T 1 202 745 3950 F 1 202 265 1662 E [email protected]

Study Team on Climate-Induced Migration

The 2011-12 famine in Somalia raised se-rious questions about how well equipped the international humanitarian aid sys-tem is to cope with the consequences of severe climate-related hazards and di-sasters that are predicted to increase in the future. The current assessments of many who have closely observed previ-ous droughts in the Horn are stark and unforgiving; they point to how a declara-tion of famine amounts to a declaration of failure to prevent widespread deaths, malnutrition and failing livelihoods,1 and a failure of the system to improve on past mistakes. The current emergency follows a series of predictable droughts and cri-ses that have hit the Horn every few years over the past decade and each time the humanitarian response has been too late and inadequate.2 This and other recent disasters – including Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar and the 2010 floods in Paki-stan – not only signal the sheer scale of devastation likely to be associated with any escalation in climate-related hazards and crises, but also signal the immensity of the challenges that these will pose for a

humanitarian regime that already appears to be falling woefully short.

This paper builds on a previous back-ground paper for the German Marshall Fund Transatlantic Study Team on Cli-mate Change and Migration which ex-plored some of the potential implica-tions of climate-induced migration for humanitarian responses.3 As observed in that paper, climate change simultaneously represents a ‘threat multiplier’ in terms of its impacts on human vulnerability4 and a ‘demand multiplier’ in its likely impacts on humanitarian needs and the conse-quent pressures on the international hu-manitarian system. Many of the world’s poorest and most crisis-prone countries will be disproportionately affected by cli-mate change owing to higher exposure to climate-related hazards such as droughts and floods, pre-existing human vulnera-bilities and weak capacities for risk reduc-tion measures.5 As formal frameworks of state-led climate change adaptation are unlikely to have much traction here, pres-sure will continue to mount on the inter-

Meeting the Challenges of Severe Climate-Related Hazards: A Review of the Effectiveness of the International Humanitarian Regimeby Sarah Collinson

November 2012

1 H. Young and S. Jaspars, “A Mockery of Famine Early Warning Systems”, posted at http://www.filtrenews.com/2011/07/mockery-of-famine-early-warning-systems.html (source: The Guardian), 22/07/11. 2 S. Levine, “Here we go again: famine in the Horn of Africa”, posted at http://blogs.odi.org.uk/blogs/main/ar-chive/2011/07/06/horn_of_africa_famine_2011_humanitarian_system.aspx (Humanitarian Policy Group, Overseas Development Institute), 06/07/11. 3 S. Collinson, ‘Developing Adequate Humanitarian Responses’, Background Paper for the Transatlantic Study Team on Climate Change and Migration, German Marshall Fund, Washington DC, 2010. 4 J. Kirsch-Wood, J. Korreborg and A.Linde, ‘What humanitarians need to do’, Forced Migration Review, Issue 31, Octo-ber 2008 (pp.40-41). 5 Informal Taskforce of the IASC et al., op cit.

national humanitarian system to help to prevent disasters, reduce vulnerability and respond to humanitarian crises in these contexts. Yet many key normative, institutional, operational and resource structures and systems within the international humanitarian sys-tem appear insufficient or inappropriate for addressing the mul-tiple and complex challenges to human security posed by climate change, and continue to undermine the system’s global capacities.

This follow-on paper is concerned with exploring these challenges and limitations more closely to seek to identify improvements that are needed in the current humanitarian regime to address the likely intensification and increasing frequency of severe climate-related natural hazards in future years. For all its faults and weaknesses, the international humanitarian regime remains critical for absorb-ing and reducing the impacts of shocks and stresses caused by ex-treme weather-related events and processes, particularly in some of the world’s poorest countries that lack sufficient resources and ca-pacities to respond effectively. Many of the most serious shortcom-ings of the regime come down to the sheer extent and complexity of humanitarian and related challenges that the world currently faces; the capacities of the regime to respond cannot be assessed without first recognizing the enormity of the challenges that are placed upon it. Many of the countries that are most prone to severe climatic hazards – and especially those countries that are most reli-ant on international assistance to cope with these hazards – suffer complex problems that greatly exacerbate and complicate the im-pacts of these hazards, including high levels of poverty and food in-security, weak state capacity or legitimacy, rapid population growth and urbanization, conflict, insecurity and large-scale displacement. In combination, these factors not only generate extreme vulner-ability to climate and other hazards, but often also make these con-texts very hazardous and difficult environments for humanitarian actors to operate in.

Judging the effectiveness of the current humanitarian regime and the improvements that are required to meet the challenges of fu-ture climate-related hazards in these contexts thus rests to a great extent on what is or should be expected of the regime, and, indeed, how that regime itself is defined. Neither of these is a straightfor-ward question to answer. Humanitarian assistance that is designed and intended as a short-term instrument for meeting acute needs, for instance, is never likely to represent an adequate instrument for addressing longer-term or structural problems generating chronic vulnerability.6 Although international humanitarian assistance has often succeeded in delivering a range of basic services in situa-

tions of long-term or recurrent crisis, this assistance has typically done little to bring about sustainable improvements in humanitar-ian indicators or any significant changes in the underlying condi-tions causing vulnerability. As discussed within this paper, what counts as ‘humanitarian’ action and what should define it and its primary actors, and how they should link with others, such as in-ternational development actors, is a long-standing and still unre-solved question that is thrown into sharp relief by the challenges of responding to new and future climate-related hazards. And while the spotlight is usually focused on international aid organisations and their national or local partners (UN agencies, NGOs and Red Cross organisations) and official donors, humanitarian responses always involve a host of other important actors that can include national militaries, governmental institutions, community groups, businesses, churches, private contractors, etc. It is very often these other ‘non-system’ responders who play a more significant role at critical points in a crisis response.

Assessing or scrutinising the strengths and deficiencies of the in-ternational humanitarian regime thus not only raises questions about the functioning of the system itself, i.e. the mechanics of the system, the technical performance of its key actors, its coverage, etc., but also about the extent or limits of its responsibilities and capacities, and the relationships that mainstream humanitarian ac-tors have with others that have central roles to play in responding to the many short- and longer-term crises and challenges caused by severe climate-related hazards. This paper will therefore start with a discussion of key issues and challenges related to the regime’s ‘in-ternal’ effectiveness and the improvements that might strengthen its capacity to cope with the impacts of future climate-related haz-ards. These include questions around coverage and the capacity of the regime to identify and respond appropriately, equitably and swiftly to humanitarian needs in contexts of climate-related and related crises. The discussion will then turn to consider issues and questions associated with the scope and expectations of the regime in connection with broader challenges of improving preparedness and reducing risks and vulnerabilities in the face of climate-related disasters.

Responding to needs?

A recent global assessment of the international humanitarian sys-tem and its current effectiveness highlights a lack of basic informa-tion about its overall size, reach, scope of action and capability.7 There is even less information about the global extent of humani-

2


6 Paul Harvey, Rebecca Holmes, Rachel Slater and *. Martin, ‘Social Protection in Fragile States’. Overseas Development Institute (London), November 2007, p.5.7 Harvey, A. Harmer, A. Stoddard, G. Taylor with V. DiDomenico and L. Brander, The State of the Humanitarian System: Assessing Performance and Progress – A Pilot Study. Active Learning Network for Accountability and Performance in Humanitarian Action (ALNAP). London, ODI, 2009.


tarian needs, whether caused by climate-related or by other haz-ards. As discussed, the assessment of humanitarian needs remains fraught with problems across the sector, with humanitarian fund-ing appeals typically used as a collective proxy for indicating the overall extent and nature of humanitarian needs across contexts where comprehensive or reliable data on key humanitarian indica-tors is often very poor, uneven or non-existent, and thus where the real scale and scope of needs are unknown. Humanitarian agen-cies commonly base their funding appeals – and hence their over-all indications of needs to meet – on what they consider realistic to expect from donors and on needs assessments and appeals that are focused in geographical areas and/or operational sectors where they are already working or are specialized and/or can gain access. Most evaluations are focused on individual projects, while a small number of system-level analyses are concerned with specific emer-gencies rather than the overall performance of the international humanitarian regime.8 There is therefore no robust evidence base for assessing the system’s overall ‘success’ in meeting humanitarian needs globally.

Nevertheless, there is near-unanimous agreement that accurate and comprehensive needs assessments are a fundamental prerequisite for efficient and equitable humanitarian relief and recovery.9 While this remains a long-standing weakness across the sector, there has been some improvement in the quality of needs assessments in the context of specific crises and individual agency operations, with a variety of new frameworks and tools now developed and applied across a range of different areas of humanitarian response, includ-ing efforts to strengthen joint needs assessments and associated planning and prioritisation of responses. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), for instance, has led the development of a ‘Humanitarian Dashboard’ under the aus-pices of an Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) Task Force on Needs Assessment that aims to present key humanitarian in-formation on particular countries affected by humanitarian crisis.

In the majority of crises, however, most needs assessments are car-ried out by single agencies using different formats of varying qual-ity and effectiveness and focusing in different areas or sectors of need in ways that cannot support a comprehensive picture of needs to be met or the joint prioritisation of interventions and targeting

of most vulnerable groups. An IASC real-time evaluation of the international humanitarian response to the 2010 floods in Paki-stan, for instance, reported a general perception that more could have been done to ensure that needs assessments were more strate-gic and instrumental: some joint assessments were conducted, but linkages were missing and there was an absence of joint program-ming around the assessments, and no clear strategy was developed to guide how different assessments would feed into programming for transition from relief activities to support for recovery. The sec-ond joint appeal (the Pakistan Floods Relief and Early Recovery Response Plan) was widely seen as a fundraising tool with limited prioritisation, based on assumption rather than robust needs as-sessments.10

The operational and political complexity of many contexts that are most severely affected by climate-related or other crises or disas-ters adds further complication to the question of the humanitar-ian regime’s effectiveness in assessing and meeting overall needs and how this might be improved. Physical access is often a primary problem, often due to immediate damage and devastation caused by the disaster itself. The real-time evaluation of the international response to the 2005-2006 drought in the Horn of Africa noted how the whole region represented a logistical challenge to emer-gency responses: roads were often impassable and the distances to be covered were often vast, with difficult security conditions fur-ther hampering the reach and coverage of relief interventions.11 In the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis, logistic constraints and access problems meant that needs were first assessed and assistance pro-vided to urban and easy-to-reach areas in the Myanmar Delta area, with more remote areas targeted much later even though they were hit harder by the cyclone; the geographical imbalance in the inter-national response in Myanmar was exacerbated by the fact that the ‘cluster’ coordination framework established by international re-lief agencies focused resources and activities almost entirely on the Delta without equal attention given to long-standing humanitar-ian needs in other parts of the country.12 Similarly, in Pakistan in 2010, the geographical coverage of the humanitarian response was focused predominantly on the most accessible areas and concen-trated in particular provinces, districts and larger towns; and with-in the provinces that were the focus of humanitarian operations, smaller communities and entire areas received less help or no as-

8 Ibid. 9 K. Stokke, Humanitarian Response to Natural Disasters: A Synthesis of Evaluation Findings. Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad), Oslo, 2007; citing also ALNAP, Annual Review 2003. Active Learning Network for Accountability and Performance in Humanitarian Action, London, ODI, 2004. 10 R. Palastro, A. Nagrah, N. Steen and F. Zafar, Inter-Agency Real-Time Evaluation of the Humanitarian Response to Pakistan’s 2010 Flood Crisis. DARA, Madrid, 2011. 11 F. Grünewald, K. Robins, A. Odicoh, M. Woldemariam, N. Nicholson and A. Teshome, Real Time Evaluation of the Drought Response in the Horn of Africa: 13/08/2006 – 20/10/2006 – Regional Synthesis. Final Report 16/12/2006.12 D. Kauffman and S. Krüger, Myanmar. IASC Cluster Approach Evaluation 2nd Phase Country Study. Groupe URD & Global Public Policy Institute, April 2010.13R. Palastro et al., op cit.

3

sistance at all. Here, infrastructure damage and security problems had a major impact on the reach and coverage of relief activities.13

Restrictions or control imposed by government or military actors for political or strategic reasons, or security problems in areas af-fected by violence also play a major part in reducing and distort-ing the coverage of humanitarian responses to climate-related and other disasters. Political influence over people’s access to relief and the political or military control and manipulation of assistance in many countries is widely recognized as a common and long-stand-ing problem across the sector, yet it is an issue that is reportedly paid relatively little attention in evaluation reports and remains poorly addressed by the sector as a whole.14 In Pakistan in 2010, many constraints to humanitarian access following the floods were caused by the authorities’ control and restriction of access to certain areas affected by ongoing conflicts, such as FATA and Balochistan. The real-time evaluation of the floods response also reported situ-ations where aid mainly reached people that were locally well po-sitioned and/or aligned to political parties, and noted situations in which agencies were unable to carry out independent needs assess-ments and/or were given lists of beneficiaries directly by the local administration or feudal landlords which were not always verified or prioritized.15 In Sri Lanka, post-tsunami and ‘post-conflict’ as-sistance has been and remains highly controlled and politicized at every level, with recovery assistance purposefully channelled to support the government’s political and strategic agenda towards the minority Tamil populations in the east and north of the coun-try.16 Similarly, in Somalia, where international humanitarian as-sistance has a long history of political manipulation and diversion, the access of relief agencies has been highly constrained since 2009 by the Islamist group al-Shabaab,17 contributing substantially to the conditions causing the 2011 famine. In Myanmar, the govern-ment was slow to provide access for international aid workers fol-lowing Cyclone Nargis, imposing tight restrictions on foreign aid workers’ access, especially to the worst affected areas in the Delta.18

The sheer scale and severity of many climate-related disasters is also a primary reason for humanitarian needs not being met, par-

ticularly in the earliest stages of a crisis. The humanitarian response to the 2010 floods in Pakistan represented the largest emergency operation ever mounted by the international humanitarian regime to date, and yet resources were quickly over-stretched due to lack of preparedness and the overwhelming scale and spread of the disas-ter. Initial funding in response to the floods was swift and substan-tial, with the first UN appeal 90% funded with a month of being launched. However, most UN agencies did not have the capacity to disburse all the money received during the initial response period. At the same time, many NGOs were struggling to mobilize funding quickly, as bilateral donor funding outside of the UN appeal was limited by donors’ existing commitments to other crises, includ-ing Haiti. Organisations that didn’t have their own quick response funds available or that couldn’t easily reallocate funds from other activities had particular problems in responding swiftly immedi-ately following the onset of the disaster.19

These bottlenecks reflect significant constraints in the internation-al system’s capacity to swiftly scale up and use financial resources quickly and effectively in response to major sudden-onset emer-gencies such as the Pakistan floods. Yet problems associated with the financing of major responses are not always a consequence of funding constraints. International humanitarian responses to the Indian Ocean Tsunami and the Haiti earthquake both suffered in-stead from humanitarian overload, with large numbers of disparate and poorly coordinated humanitarian actors arriving en-masse with substantial funding and huge pressure to achieve concrete results in a short period of time. This led to situations in which as-sistance was driven by over-resourcing and agency interests rather than people’s actual needs on the ground.20 Here, the major limita-tions were those of standards and operational coordination over-stretch rather than constrained financial resources.

The potential for over-stretch has been exacerbated when ma-jor disasters have hit different countries simultaneously, and/or when a series of disasters take place consecutively or coincide in a single country. When the humanitarian system was called upon to respond to the floods in Pakistan, most humanitarian donor


4

11 F. Grünewald, K. Robins, A. Odicoh, M. Woldemariam, N. Nicholson and A. Teshome, Real Time Evaluation of the Drought Response in the Horn of Africa: 13/08/2006 – 20/10/2006 – Regional Synthesis. Final Report 16/12/2006. 12 D. Kauffman and S. Krüger, Myanmar. IASC Cluster Approach Evaluation 2nd Phase Country Study. Groupe URD & Global Public Policy Institute, April 2010.13R. Palastro et al., op cit. 14 K. Stokke, op cit.15 R. Palastro et al., op cit.16 J. Goodhand, ‘Stabilising a victor’s peace? Humanitarian action and reconstruction in Sri Lanka’, Disasters 34(S3), 2010, pp.S342-S367. 17 See K. Menkhaus, ‘Stabilisation and humanitarian access in a collapsed state: the Somali case’, Disasters 34(S3), 2010, pp.**. 18 D. Kauffman and S. Krüger, op cit., p.20; citing International Crisis Group, ‘Burma/Myanmar after Nargis: time to normalise aid relations’, ICG, October 2008. 19 R. Palastro et al., op cit. 20 On the Indian Ocean Tsunami response, see J. Telford and J. Cosgrave, Joint Evaluation of the International Response to the Indian Ocean Tsunami: Synthesis Report, Tsunami Evalu-ation Coalition, 2006, at http://www.alnap.org/pool/files/889.pdf. See also K. Stokke, op cit.

resources were already committed to the earthquake response in Haiti and a major UN appeal had just been launched to address the needs of Pakistan’s 2.6 million IDPs and other conflict-affected populations.21 While the international funding response to the first UN appeal for Pakistan flood relief was unprecedented, it appears that funding for lower-profile crises may have suffered as a conse-quence, as suggested by the fact that funding for complex emer-gency appeals decreased considerably in 2010 while funding for flash appeals skyrocketed by 1,635% compared with the previous year.22 When drought hit the Horn of Africa in 2005-2006, inter-national awareness of the extent of humanitarian needs across the region were raised after donor resources had already been heav-ily committed to the responses to the South Asia Tsunami and the Pakistan earthquake. According to a real-time evaluation of the in-ternational response to the drought, donors’ humanitarian reserves were at the lowest possible level precisely at the time when they were most needed in the Horn.23

The growing likelihood of major climate-related and other disasters occurring concurrently and/or consecutively thus raises the stakes substantially for an international humanitarian regime that is al-ready struggling – and often failing – to meet humanitarian needs in those countries that are most vulnerable to and least able to cope with the impacts of climate-related hazards. Pooled humanitarian funds managed by OCHA – the global pooled Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF), and the Common Humanitarian Funds (CHF) and Emergency Response Funds (ERF) at country level – have helped substantially to address imbalances and shortfalls of humanitarian financing for both slow and sudden-onset disasters. Meanwhile, through the Good Humanitarian Donorship initiative, official humanitarian donors have committed to strengthen their efforts to ensure that funding is allocated in proportion to needs and on the basis of needs assessments, and that funding of humani-tarian action in new crises does not adversely affect the meeting of needs in ongoing crises. International government funding for humanitarian assistance has increased in recent years, reaching a historic high of over $12 billion in 2010, mirroring a parallel esca-lation in funding demands expressed through UN appeals. Yet, in 2010, the level of needs that were unmet in the UN’s consolidated appeals process (CAP) increased and humanitarian funding was

still very unevenly distributed across crises, with many complex emergencies left disproportionately under-funded compared with many sudden-onset disasters such as the Haiti earthquake.24 While the Pakistan flood response represented one of the largest in histo-ry, the scale of the crisis meant that contributions per person affect-ed were reportedly substantially lower compared with other major sudden-onset emergencies in recent years,25 and the focus on the flood response sidelined the concurrent appeal for IDP assistance in Pakistan through the Pakistan Humanitarian Response Plan.26

The potential for high-profile and large-scale disasters to capture international attention and resources at the expense of more hid-den and/or longer-term crises may become a growing problem for the international assistance regime and its capacity to meet hu-manitarian needs. Moreover, if, as predicted, climate change brings about greater unpredictability and variability in climate-related hazards and increasing vulnerability to these hazards in many countries in the future: while the frequency and scale of major di-sasters is likely to escalate, so too is the occurrence of smaller-scale crises, many of which are likely to fall completely under the ra-dar of the mainstream humanitarian system. Those that do figure on the international humanitarian agenda may still not elicit an adequate or timely response because the greater number of crises is likely to exacerbate problems of donor fatigue and information overload – as is already witnessed in many countries that suffer multiple, chronic, recurrent and overlapping humanitarian crises caused by a combination of environmental, political and other shocks and stresses. A real-time evaluation of the international re-sponse to the drought in the Horn of Africa in 2005-2006, for in-stance, observed that the repetition of appeals – in some cases over 20-30 years – and their increasing frequency, including mid-year and flash appeals, may have contributed to donor fatigue; donors reported difficulty in obtaining resources from their headquarters until the ‘CNN effect’ had occurred in their home countries. Do-nors were also waiting for the second rains to fail in 2005 to ensure that both rainy seasons had failed before acting. Another review of the 2005/6 drought response has suggested that, in a context of chronic food insecurity where emergency alerts are signalled repeatedly, many humanitarian and development actors found it difficult to distinguish the symptoms of chronic destitution from


5

21 Ibid. 22 Global Humanitarian Assistance, GHA Report 2011, Development Initiatives, 2011, p.7, at http://www.globalhumanitarianassistance.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/gha-report-2011.pdf. 23 F. Grünewald, K. Robins et al., op cit. 24 Global Humanitarian Assistance, op cit., pp.6-7. 25 M. Zaidi, ‘Why Doesn’t the World Care about Pakistanis?’, Foreign Policy 19/08/10, at http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/08/19/why_doesnt_the_world_care_about_paki-stanis.26 R. Palastro et al., op cit.

those of a critically unstable situation, while the repeated alerts also may have desensitized agencies to the evolving crisis.27

Just as lower-profile or small-scale crises are liable to be overlooked by the mainstream humanitarian system, so too are the so-called ‘idiosyncratic’ needs of particular groups or households affected by climate-related and other hazards. While systems of international humanitarian response are set up to address widespread or ‘covari-ate’ shocks such as floods, cyclones or severe droughts affecting large numbers or concentrations of people or whole populations simultaneously, there is a growing body of evidence to show that the overwhelming majority of hunger-related deaths worldwide – many of which may be related directly or indirectly to climate-related hazards – occur outside any kind of declared ‘humanitarian emergency’ or recognized ‘disaster’ as such, and that acute tran-sitory shortfalls in access to food and shocks to other assets and income – often caused by climate-related hazards – are dispropor-tionately specific to individuals and households rather than experi-enced community- or population-wide.28

A recent study of household vulnerability in flood-prone coastal villages in Gujarat, India, for example, points to significant varia-tions in different households’ relative exposure and vulnerability to floods and related hazards, with gender, physical location, liveli-hood diversification, social support networks and other assets all influencing the particular vulnerability profiles of different indi-viduals and households. In one village, a female head of household with a single insecure income source as a daily wage labourer, a large number of dependents, no social support and a house in a low-lying flood-prone area of the village was substantially more vulnerable than a male village leader living in a house with a raised plinth to avoid flood damage and a diverse income stream.29 With global systems of emergency response set up to respond to the more clearly identifiable covariate needs, the fact that the great-est proportion of vulnerability to climate-related hazards is highly idiosyncratic in this way means that the humanitarian regime may be marginal or irrelevant to meeting the humanitarian needs of perhaps the majority of people globally who are severely affected by climate-related hazards and/or acute food insecurity.

Even in situations of concerted humanitarian action in response to a clearly recognized crisis, targeting the most vulnerable and

those most in need of assistance remains a huge and unsolved chal-lenge for humanitarian agencies. Improved recognition of different groups’ and individuals’ relative vulnerability to climate-related and other hazards has spawned the development of a variety of different tools designed to measure the susceptibility of particu-lar populations or geographical areas, such as the now widely-used Vulnerability and Analysis Mapping tool. These tools and frame-works face a problem of tracking complicated relationships be-tween a host of interacting social, economic, environmental and other factors in situations of volatility, uncertainty and often lack of data. While some approaches to vulnerability mapping single out certain groups as particularly vulnerable (e.g. women, children, the disabled, etc.), more critical analyses have highlighted that cer-tain groups cannot be assumed to be more vulnerable than others simply because of presumed socio-economic or other status. More problematic again is the challenge of establishing an effective link between robust vulnerability analysis and effective operational pro-gramming and prioritisation. This remains an elusive goal for the humanitarian sector as a whole. Part of the difficulty for developing appropriate responses to the vulnerability identified lies in explain-ing that vulnerability in the first place. Analytical capacities across the humanitarian sector remain weak overall, and the complexity of causes and consequences of vulnerability in most contexts of chronic or acute humanitarian need may be extremely difficult to disentangle, as discussed further below. The real-time evaluation of the response to the 2005-2006 drought in the Horn of Africa, for instance, observes that the complex relationship between family food supply and child nutritional status continues to prove a seri-ous challenge to donors, scholars and humanitarian actors alike.30

Responding to needs: key messages and recommendations

Calls for improvements in the connectedness, consis-tency, quality, scope and coverage of humanitarian needs assessment have been repeated in numerous evaluations and specialist assessments for well over a decade, and yet this remains a key weakness across the sector and in many situations of response to climate-related and other hazards. The imperative to improve systems of needs as-sessment is all the greater given the growing demands that will be placed on the humanitarian system as a con-


6

27 Humanitarian Policy Group, Saving lives through livelihoods: critical gaps in the response to the drought in the Greater Horn of Africa. HPG Briefing Note. Overseas Development Institute (London), 2006. 28 C. Barrett, Food Aid In Response to Acute Food Insecurity. Background Paper prepared for the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). Cornell University, 2006. 29 D. Mustafa, S. Ahmed, E. Saroch and H. Bell, ‘Pinning down vulnerability: from narratives to numbers’, Disasters 35(1), pp.62-86.

sequence of climate change and other processes causing growing levels of vulnerability across the globe. There is a need for more common and/or joined up and consis-tent needs assessments that are linked more strategically among key humanitarian actors in ways that can support join strategy and/or programming. Needs assessment should be central to the coordination of humanitarian re-sponse, including within the cluster system.*

The coverage of needs assessments in the midst of crises or following disasters needs to be improved to reduce the arbitrary and/or input-led concentration of humanitarian assistance on particular forms of assistance or easy-to-reach geographical areas or social groups. Therefore, in a given context, assessments should be implemented and coordinated so as to ensure that humanitarian agencies – both individually and collectively – are able to identify relative levels of need across a range of parameters, in-cluding geographic, temporal, social (including gender, age, ethnicity, etc.), political and economic and able to in-corporate an understanding of people’s coping strategies and adaptive behaviour.**

As many of the most vulnerable people will be in urban areas, efforts to improve needs assessment and associated planning and coordination of humanitarian responses must encompass improved strategies for assessing hu-manitarian needs among urban as well as rural popula-tions; at the same time, efforts to improve the coverage of needs assessments must ensure that difficult-to-reach rural areas are included. In situations where it is difficult or impossible to reach conflict-affected populations, ef-forts must be made to ensure best estimates of their num-ber and location and the nature and severity of needs and the risks that they face. Where people in inaccessible areas are likely to be at severe risk, they should be considered a priority for humanitarian action.

* J. Steets, F. Grünewald, A. Binder, V. de Geoffroy, D. Kauffmann, S. Krüger, C. Meier and B. Sokpoh, Cluster Approach Evaluation 2 Synthesis Report. IASC Cluster Approach Evaluation, 2nd Phase, April 2010. ** See, for example, J. Darcy and C.-A. Hoffman, According to Need? Needs assess-ment and decision-making in the humanitarian sector, HPG Report 15, London: Overseas Development Institute (Humanitarian Policy Group), 2003. See also K. Stokke, op cit.; P. Harvey et al., op cit..

Responding effectively and in time?

There is considerable ambiguity and instability in the governance of the humanitarian system which is brought about by the mul-tiplicity of actors and agendas within it. While, to a large extent, ‘money always talks’, power to determine and implement policies at the system-wide level is nevertheless dispersed relatively hori-zontally among UN specialized agencies, the bigger INGOs and donors. It is no great surprise, therefore, that coordination and leadership within and across the international humanitarian sys-tem remains a perennial problem and a continuing preoccupation of the major humanitarian policy networks. This is clearly reflected in key policy-related networks within the humanitarian system, in-cluding the Inter-Agency Standing Committee and the Good Hu-manitarian Donorship initiative,31 and in the wide-ranging reforms introduced across the sector following a comprehensive review of international humanitarian response systems commissioned by the UN Emergency Relief Coordinator in 2004. Most notable among these reforms has been the introduction of the ‘cluster’ system as a framework to support international operational responses to hu-manitarian crises. The cluster approach aims to strengthen overall humanitarian response capacity as well as the effectiveness of the response by ensuring sufficient global capacity, predictable leader-ship, stronger partnerships and accountability and strategic field-level coordination and prioritisation. While sector coordination existed before the cluster approach was adopted, the biggest dif-ference with earlier initiatives is the naming of cluster lead agen-cies, which assume responsibility for coordinating activities within their sectors and identifying gaps, and function as the ‘providers of last resort’, intended to fill critical gaps that no other humanitarian agencies are able to address. The cluster lead also works with the UN’s Humanitarian Coordinator at country level and with donors to mobilize humanitarian funding and advocate on humanitarian issues, such as access. The cluster approach has not been imple-mented in over 36 countries, and the intention to extend it eventu-ally to all countries where the UN has a Humanitarian Coordinator.

A recent comprehensive evaluation of the cluster approach found that, so far, the cluster framework seems to have improved coverage in certain sectoral or thematic areas (e.g. nutrition, disability, water and sanitation), it has identified gaps in assistance and reduced du-plications, it has helped humanitarian actors to learn and thereby improve practice. Moreover, it has supported better coordination and stronger partnerships between UN actors and other interna-tional humanitarian actors, especially with NGOs where they have


7

30 F. Grünewald, K. Robins et al., op cit.31 S. Collinson, ‘The Role of Networks in the International Humanitarian System’, a report commissioned by the U.S. Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA), Overseas Develop-ment Institute, May 2011. See also P. Harvey et al., op cit.

assumed co-lead or co-facilitator roles. It was also found to have strengthened the humanitarian identity of cluster members, which has helped in mobilizing actors and resources for humanitarian assistance and improved the planning and quality of proposals and appeals. However, the evaluation also highlighted a number of problems and shortcomings, including often poor cluster man-agement and facilitation, ineffective inter-cluster coordination and weak integration of cross-cutting issues such as protection, liveli-hoods, disaster risk reduction and early recovery. Importantly, the evaluation found that the cluster system tends to exclude national and local actors and frequently fails to link in with, build on or support existing coordination and response mechanisms, with in-sufficient analysis of local or national structures and capacities; in several cases, this was found to have weakened national and local ownership and capacities. The evaluation also identified problems in the distribution of roles and coordination between the cluster system and other international mechanisms for immediate emer-gency response, most notably with the UN Disaster Assessment and Coordination System (UNDAC) and its coordination mecha-nisms, which include UNDAC field teams, the International Search and Rescue Advisory Group and On-Site Operations Coordination Centres.32

At country level, the implementation of the cluster approach and its strengths and weaknesses was found to vary significantly. In the response to Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar, high staff turn-over and lack of training in facilitation and coordination techniques, lack of clarity around the roles of UN agencies with regards to food aid, food security, agriculture and early recovery and poor lead-ership in these areas led to confusion around roles and reporting and coordination between different clusters. Other observers have pointed to the danger of segmenting needs and activities into dis-crete sectors, which further limits humanitarian actors’ ability to address cross-cutting problems effectively.33 Similar problems were highlighted by the 2010 real-time evaluation of the international response to the Pakistan floods. It was noted that while all the clus-ters were to some extent effective in addressing the needs of af-fected populations, there was a widespread view that the heavily institutionalized cluster set-up was too cumbersome and distracted focus and resources from the response on the ground. It appeared that the severity and scale of the disaster made it impossible for the humanitarian community to respond effectively through the cluster framework, and that the clusters added little value since

they did not serve as forums for needed strategic planning and pri-oritization, nor as a platform to support joint communication and planning between international and national actors. Instead, the clusters were used primarily for information sharing but generally within silos, with little or not cross-linkage across areas or sectors. This raises questions about the proportionality of the huge finan-cial and human resources invested in the cluster system: the evalu-ation observes that the ‘information flow was massive but with lim-ited strategic usage’. There was little leadership and agenda-setting at the inter-cluster coordination level, and weak communication between the international humanitarian system and Pakistan’s National Disaster Management Authority. UN coordination ap-peared to become an end in itself for many stakeholders within the system, rather than an effective or strategic means to improve the response.34

The failure of international response systems actors to link effec-tively with national and local counterparts remains a perennial problem across the humanitarian regime.35 This is despite a growing recognition across the sector that many governments are able and/or determined to take the lead in responding to climate-related and other disasters within their borders, and despite clear evidence that the most important and effective first-responders to sudden-onset disasters are usually local and national actors rather than the sys-tem’s international agencies. Mozambique’s Government led a suc-cessful response to floods and a cyclone in 2007 without launching an international appeal for assistance; international humanitarian actors were initially excluded from Myanmar’s response to Cyclone Nargis; and the Pakistan military and civilian authorities played the primary role in responding to the 2010 floods. In Ethiopia and Kenya, there are well-established government-led processes sup-porting national appeals in response to droughts and other crises.

The reasons for weaknesses in the links between international and national authorities are multiple, complex and highly context-specific. In Pakistan in 2010, for instance, most OECD-DAC do-nors chose to channel their funds through the UN response plan rather than the Pakistan Government’s Response Fund because of worries about corruption and transparency in the disbursement of funds, and operational coordination with the civilian authori-ties was hampered by lack of capacity and resources at key levels of the civilian government and administration.36 In Kenya and Ethiopia, the feasibility and effectiveness of national contingency


8

32 J. Steets, F. Grünewald, A. Binder, V. de Geoffroy, D. Kauffmann, S. Krüger, C. Meier and B. Sokpoh, Cluster Approach Evaluation 2 Synthesis Report. IASC Cluster Approach Evaluation, 2nd Phase, April 2010. 33 P. Harvey et al., op. cit.34 P. Harvey et al., op. cit. 35 P. Harvey, Towards Good Humanitarian Government: the role of the affected state in disaster response’. HPG Report 29, Overseas Development Institute (London), 2009 36 R. Palastro et al., op cit.

plans to which international actors might engage have been sig-nificantly constrained by the lack of adequate financial resources for supporting contingency funds.37 In Myanmar, the govern-ment’s long-standing hostility towards key Western actors resulted in ASEAN playing a more important role than the UN in the early stages of the response to Cyclone Nargis. In China, over 5 million people have been affected by floods in the east of the country in 2011, and yet this and previous flood responses in China have bare-ly registered on the international humanitarian (or media) radar since the responses have been carried out more or less entirely by China’s own civilian authorities and army.38 Meanwhile, the restric-tions imposed on international actors by al-Shabaab in Somalia are motivated by a militant political agenda which is unrelated to any national capacity to meet the needs of populations most severely affected by the current drought; these restrictions have only been partially relaxed in recent weeks despite the worsening famine.

The role of national and local actors is central to any assessment of the timeliness of humanitarian responses in any particular disas-ter context. Delays in international actors responding to sudden or acute emergencies or disasters are sometimes caused by the re-luctance of national governments to request assistance or issue ap-peals. In the Horn of Africa in 2005, the trigger for a major regional response to the drought was the official declaration by the Kenyan Government that the drought was a national disaster; because this declaration came late (at the end of December), and the critical time for saving lives and livelihoods had already been lost, with an estimated 40% of livestock already lost along the Kenya-Somalia border.39 The real-time evaluation of the Pakistan floods response notes that Pakistan’s Government has been reluctant to have too many appeals because it does not want to be perceived as a failed state; in the case of the floods, however, the magnitude of the disas-ter was so great that national capacities were overwhelmed and the government had no choice but to request international assistance.

Following that request, the international humanitarian system started to mobilize relatively quickly. Disagreements between the UN and the Government over priorities and scope of the revised international response plan resulted in a significant delay that threatened to derail the appeal process, and for those affected on the ground, the international response was generally too slow to be

considered life-saving and so instead the response amounted more to a ‘second wave’ of support. Among the international organiza-tions, it was mainly those that already had a longstanding presence in the country who were able to act quickly and mobilize staff and resources. More important, still, however, was the immediate ac-tion taken by the local population, local district governments, local philanthropists and the military.40 Similarly, in Myanmar following Cyclone Nargis, most of the life-saving activities were carried out by national actors before the arrival of international agencies, with individuals, private businesses, student groups, local agencies and the business community playing a primary role in distributing re-lief and providing assistance in the early stages of the response.41 A 2007 meta-evaluation of international humanitarian responses to natural disasters reported that lessons learned from sudden-onset disasters repeatedly highlight the key role played by local actors and institutions but also point to the frequently problematic re-lationship of local with non-local actors. Once the international agencies move in, local structures are typically marginalized in decision-making processes and implementation, or key personnel in local organizations are recruited by international organizations, or local organizations simply sub-contracted by the bigger inter-national players. These relationships often undermine rather than develop the capacities of local actors.42

The need for more timely and flexible donor funding to support timely responses remains a key challenge for the international hu-manitarian system, although some improvements have been re-ported in this regard – for instance, a greater percentage of OECD-DAC donors’ contributions to chronic crisis contexts is committed in the first and second quarters or in preceding years.43 Since most humanitarian aid is de facto long-term assistance into countries af-fected by chronic or long-term crises (just under 70% in 2009), this trend is significant.44 The expanded CERF and other pooled funds have also made an important contribution to improving the timeli-ness of international humanitarian funding to support responses to sudden-onset emergencies; meanwhile, agencies that have their own reserve funding best placed to respond in the initial phases of response.45 Matching efforts to improve the timeliness of fund-ing, key international agencies have also invested substantially in strengthening and expanding their standby capacities to support swifter responses to rapid-onset emergencies and improving con-


9

37 Humanitarian Policy Group, op cit. 38 BBC News Asia-Pacific, ‘China floods: millions affected by deadly downpours’, 20 June 2011, at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-13831068. 39 Humanitarian Policy Group, op cit. 40 R. Palastro et al., op cit. 41 D. Kauffman and S. Krüger, op cit. 42 K. Stokke, op cit. 43 P. Harvey et al., op cit. 44 Global Humanitarian Assistance, op cit.45 P. Harvey et al., op cit.

tingency planning and preparedness.46 Strengthening the system’s so-called ‘surge capacity’ comes at a potential cost, however, since it carries the risk of the system swamping certain higher-profile emergencies with inappropriate input-led responses and diverting human and financial resources away from others.

In theory, recent improvements and innovations in developing and strengthening early warning systems should have played a sig-nificant role in improving the timeliness and effectiveness of in-ternational humanitarian responses to climate-related and other hazards and disasters. In Bangladesh, for example, it is noteworthy that devastating floods caused famine in the mid-1970s, but even worse floods in recent years have been much more capably man-aged to reduce vulnerability and prevent and mitigate the impacts. Part of the solution has been a cyclone warning system using a ra-dio network that links Dhaka with 143 local radio stations relaying alerts to 33,000 village-based volunteers who are then able to sig-nal the alert via megaphone to villagers who are at risk47 and may then have a chance to seek safety in community cyclone shelters. Yet early warning systems, however sophisticated, do not guaran-tee timely or effective humanitarian responses to all climate-related hazards in all contexts. In the Horn of Africa in 2005-2006, early warning systems were well-established, and included both interna-tional systems such as the Famine Early Warning Systems Frame-work (FEWSNET) and the Food Security Assessment Unit in Nai-robi for Somalia, and national-level systems including assessments by Ethiopia’s Early Warning Department and Kenya’s Arid Lands Resource Management Programme. These systems were providing good-quality and timely data that was quickly disseminated to do-nors and agencies, and by November 2005, there were emergency warnings of ‘pervasive pre-famine conditions’ with potential for widespread famine in pastoral areas.48 The real-time evaluation of humanitarian action in the face of the crisis concluded that criti-cal delays in response were not due to lack of early information, but to operational, policy and political constraints, which included restricted earmarking of funding (for food), security problems (So-malia), lack of trusted local partners able to respond immediately on the ground (Somalia and Kenya), and the reluctance to support mitigation responses beyond food aid.49 In Pakistan, meanwhile, the rapidity of the onset and spread of the floods meant that what-ever early warning there was could not be early enough to allow sufficient time to support effective preparedness and mitigation interventions on any substantial scale. These recent experiences of both slow- and rapid-onset disasters demonstrate all too clearly the

limitations of early warning if it isn’t directly linked to national and international plans and capacities that will support timely and ap-propriate responses.50

Responding effectively and in time: key messages and recommendations

Donors and major operational agencies need to strength-en and maintain improved analytical capacity and analysis support structures that link field assessments effectively and strategically to country and HQ levels to ensure that they are able to respond appropriately and strategically to repeated and concurrent appeals. This will enable them to cope with associated information flows, so as to sup-port timely and effective responses and reduce the risk of key windows of opportunity being missed to implement preventive and other action that might mitigate the worst impacts of climate-related hazards or disasters. This needs to include improved analytical capacity to support better understanding of and responsiveness to vulnerability and to support improved targeting of short- and longer-term responses.

With expanded engagement in countries affected by complex crises, many aid agencies have sought to inform and refine their programming with strengthened politi-cal economy or broader context analysis and monitoring. Yet, for the majority of agencies, robust analysis of this kind remains largely ad hoc and at the margins of assis-tance activities on the ground. This encourages standard-ized interventions that may not be appropriately adapted to local conditions – such as an over-reliance on food aid rather than livelihoods support in situations of chronic or recurrent food insecurity – and it weakens downward and outcome-focused accountability and agencies’ ability to apply ‘do no harm’ and other principles and standards of good practice. The weakness of much context analysis cannot be attributed entirely to a lack of appropriate or accessible information or appropriate analytical tools; it is also likely to result from institutional impediments to mainstreaming context analysis due to organisational and resourcing structures, cultures of practice, and incentive and governance systems within aid organisations and the wider aid industry. Humanitarian agencies and donors

46 P. Harvey et al., op cit.47 C. Barrett, op cit. 48 F. Grünewald, K. Robins et al., op cit.; & Humanitarian Policy Group, op cit. 49 F. Grünewald, K. Robins et al., op cit. 50 Humanitarian Policy Group, op cit.


10

and key fora within the mainstream humanitarian system need to address continuing difficulties and impediments to mainstreaming high-quality context analysis into relief, livelihoods and related operational programming, includ-ing in situations of conflict and insecurity where they will continue to face a variety of security-related and other obstacles and dilemmas in their efforts to assist or pro-tect vulnerable populations. In these situations, improved analytical capacity needs to be closely linked to better sys-tems of strategic analysis, planning and negotiation where there is a risk of political manipulation or restriction of assistance.

At the same time, donors need to ensure that humanitar-ian funding remains sufficiently flexible to support re-sponses suited to highly varied and complex situations of vulnerability and need resulting from climate-related and other hazards and shocks across a broad range of both urban and rural contexts. This must include action to ad-dress both chronic and acute needs in countries of varying state capacity and in situations where access and/or moni-toring may be very difficult or restricted. It depends on donors maintaining a range of different funding channels that can be used responsively and flexibly according to the demands of particular contexts,* allowing for funding to be reallocated quickly and easily between emergencies and ensuring that the humanitarian system can respond to major crises that hit concurrently and/or consecutively within a short time-frame, and ensuring that responses to major crises do not result in under-funding of low-profile, chronic and/or ‘forgotten’ crises. This should in-clude support both for pooled funds managed by OCHA and bilateral funding direct to operational agencies.The larger operational agencies should try to establish or ex-pand their own quick-response funds. Donors therefore need to maintain or develop their own capacities to man-age mixed funding and to manage and respond effectively to complex information flows associated with different forms and contexts of humanitarian need associated with climate-related and other hazards and shocks.

Despite the contributions that the clusters have made to improve the effectiveness of humanitarian programming, major shortcomings of the cluster system have also been identified in recent cross-system evaluations and other assessments. These include a tendency for the clusters

to weaken cross-sectoral assessments, coordination and programming, to prioritize technical and logistical initia-tives and information-sharing over strategic leadership and planning, and to impose heavy institutional and bu-reaucratic demands on humanitarian agencies that are of-ten to the detriment of responsive and effective action on the ground. As recommended by the most recent cross-sector evaluation of the cluster system, there is a need to strengthen cluster management and implementation mo-dalities, to continue to mainstream cluster lead responsi-bilities, to clarify and strengthen the roles of OCHA and Humanitarian Coordinators, and to define more clearly the roles and responsibilities of different cluster meetings and fora.**

Recognition of the mounting demands on a humanitar-ian system that is already seriously overstretched under-lines the need for key actors and fora within the system to engage, coordinate and cooperate more effectively and strategically with state and other national and local actors in countries facing the greatest humanitarian challenges due to climate-related hazards and shocks. As recom-mended in a recent review of the role of disaster-affected states, a key goal of international humanitarian actors should always be to encourage and support states to fulfil their responsibilities to assist and protect their own citi-zens in times of disaster. Yet, international aid agencies often pay little heed to the central role of the state, with principles of political neutrality and independence often taken as a reason for disengagement from state structures rather than principled engagement with them.*** As rec-ommended by the most recent cluster evaluation, there is a need for international humanitarian actors to iden-tify existing preparedness, response and coordination mechanisms and capacities in affected countries and to link with, support or complement them where appropri-ate. This requires an analysis of the context and existing coordination and response mechanisms and capacities before implementing clusters and ensuring appropriate links with rapid response mechanisms, the identification of appropriate partners in national and local authorities, and strengthened cooperation and coordination between clusters, national actors and development actors at every stage from preparedness to response through to develop-ment-focused programming, and better facilitation and support for the participation of national and local NGOs


12

in the clusters and more effective efforts to strengthen their capacities.**** It also calls for agencies and the clus-ters individually and jointly to invest in improved mecha-nisms to directly support politically-informed engage-ment and strategic coordination with national institutions and organisations, rather than focusing all attention and resources on the system’s own technical capacities and op-erational priorities.

At the same time, the system’s most established institu-tions and organisations need to consider what steps might be taken to improve standards of international humani-tarian engagement, including steps to prevent or mitigate the potential for harmful ‘swamping’ of major sudden-on-set emergencies by large numbers of international organi-zations. This may include efforts by the clusters to define and promote relevant standards in particular sectoral and cross-cutting areas of response.**

* See A. Stoddard, ‘International Humanitarian Financing: Review and compara-tive assessment of instruments’, Study for the Good Humanitarian Donorship ini-tiative commissioned by the Office of US Foreign Disaster Assistance, July 2008. ** J. Steets et al., op cit.*** P. Harvey, Towards Good Humanitarian Government: The role of the affected state in disaster response, HPG Policy Brief 37, London, Overseas Development Institute (Humanitarian Policy Group), 2009.

Strengthening preparedness and reducing vulnerability?

As noted in the introduction, the question of adequacy or appro-priateness in relation to humanitarian action begs the question of what is intended or expected of international humanitarian action in response to climate-related or other hazards or disasters. Hu-manitarian assistance is conventionally depicted or defined as a short-term and limited response to immediate humanitarian needs focused on life-saving interventions. And yet the bulk of human-itarian aid is in fact directed to situations of long-running crisis involving complex and variable cycles and combinations of both chronic and acute humanitarian and/or livelihood needs caused by equally complex and variable combinations of risks, hazards and vulnerabilities. Meanwhile, in the context of acute or rapid-onset emergencies, humanitarian action usually expected in practice to go beyond immediate life-saving activities to include interventions to support recovery and address people’s vulnerabilities that pre-ceded and/or resulted from the disaster. Vulnerability results not only from people’s direct exposure to particular shocks or risk fac-

tors (or combinations of these), but also from underlying political and socio-economic structures and the processes that affect their capacity to cope with those risks or shocks.51 If humanitarian ac-tion fails to address people’s vulnerabilities, it is easily seen as fun-damentally deficient, particularly when it is provided year-on-year into situations of widespread and chronic vulnerability or into situ-ations where people’s pre-existing vulnerability has largely caused the disaster, or where the disaster itself has left large numbers of people vulnerable to future hazards. Evaluations of humanitarian action in situations of drought, for instance, consistently criticize frameworks of response that define food insecurity and famine in terms of food shortage rather than livelihood crises and that therefore encourage a focus on the distribution of food (short- or long-term) rather than livelihoods-focused interventions that may reduce people’s vulnerability to new disasters.52

Thus, in the context of the Horn of Africa, Pantuliano and Pavanel-lo argue that an adequate response to drought needs to be based on recognition that droughts are a predictable event in this region and are likely to intensify in frequency and magnitude as a conse-quence of climate change. Effective responses therefore demand a framework of humanitarian action that is part of a comprehensive strategy to address the vulnerability of pastoralist populations in this region. This requires a combination of short-term and longer-term interventions and policies, all of which need to include a central focus on reducing vulnerability and building resilience to future droughts and other shocks or hazards. The challenge, there-fore, is not only to strengthen the institutional and programmatic links between short-term ‘relief ’ and longer-term ‘development’ interventions – this is widely recognized as a continuing challenge for humanitarian and development donors and agencies – but also to ensure that vulnerability reduction is integrated into the core of short-term emergency programming and that this, in turn, is inte-grated effectively with longer-term action: strengthening pastoral-ists’ resilience in the Horn of Africa requires livelihoods-focused programming that is matched to the different stages of a crisis and that surmounts the conventional distinction between humanitar-ian and development approaches.53

In situations of acute food insecurity or famine, the direct provi-sion of food through food aid has a crucial role to play in reduc-ing vulnerability. This is because a sudden or dramatic collapse in access to food can directly threaten lives and cause long-term or permanent damage to people’s livelihoods even when the shock it-


13

51 R. Chambers, 1989, **. 52 K. Stokke, op cit.53 S. Pantuliano and S. Pavanello, Taking drought into account: addressing chronic vulnerability among pastoralists in the Horn of Africa.HPG Policy Brief 35 (May 2009), Overseas Development Institute (London), 2009.

self may be short-lived, since people who are acutely food insecure often have to deplete or liquidate productive assets and so compro-mise their future livelihoods and food security in order to survive in the short term. Thus timely and well-targeted delivery of food aid for populations suffering severe food security shocks can be crucial for protecting the livelihoods and reducing the vulnerabil-ity of those affected. Yet, food is never the only resource that people need in situations of acute food insecurity, and thus food aid with-out complementary non-food assistance is invariably insufficient. Moreover, if continued over extended periods of time and if not balanced appropriately with other broader-based interventions to support livelihoods, food aid has the potential to increase vulner-ability in areas affected by chronic or recurrent food insecurity by undermining local food production, limiting the diversification of livelihoods and supporting unsustainable population growth.54 De-spite wide recognition across the humanitarian sector of the limita-tions and liabilities of long-term food aid, it continues to dominate over all other forms of assistance in most situations of both chronic and acute food insecurity, representing a very high share of hu-manitarian aid for some countries over long periods; for instance, Ethiopia has received 80.5% of its humanitarian aid as food aid over the last five years.55

The preference for food aid is partly explained by donors’ prefer-ence for a ‘safe option’ with well-understood and reliable mecha-nisms and expected short-term results.56 For instance, a review of the 2005-2006 Horn of Africa drought response observed that, against a well-understood and accepted food system and widely available food assistance, donors were not convinced that live-lihoods interventions would do more to save lives. Their lack of support for livelihoods-focused assistance was exacerbated by the quality and nature of livelihoods assessments, which were seen by many as too general and too short of the kind of ‘hard’ data that can be provided by more narrowly-focused food assessments.57 Meanwhile, operational agencies lacked an adequate understand-ing of pastoral populations and they lacked the technical capaci-ties, resources and operational responsiveness needed to mount effective emergency livelihoods interventions, which are typically complex, time-consuming and expensive. The disconnect between humanitarian and development financing and interventions lim-ited the scope for adapting and expanding pre-existing livelihoods

interventions in response to the crisis, and meant that opportuni-ties for both short- and longer-term action to reduce or prevent asset depletion and collapse of livelihoods were missed at crucial points before, during and following the crisis.58 These failures have undoubtedly contributed to the current food security emergency in the Horn.59

Clearly, however, there are limitations to the mitigating action and impacts that the international humanitarian regime can achieve in the face of severe food security and other crises that have deep and complex structural causes. While vulnerability to food insecurity may be caused most immediately by factors such as land degrada-tion, recurrent drought, population pressure and low agricultural productivity, at root this vulnerability is generated by deeper pro-cesses of marginalization, disempowerment, impoverishment and/or displacement that place some people or groups at particular risk in many countries. While livelihoods interventions and other ac-tions to improve people’s resilience in the face of climate-related and other hazards may lessen the impacts or implications of struc-tural vulnerability and the sudden or progressive exacerbation of this vulnerability by shocks and stresses to people’s livelihood systems, ultimately any substantial or sustainable steps to address vulnerability to climate-related hazards must themselves be funda-mentally structural or transformative – hence the need to for hu-manitarian action to be linked with or supported by ambitious and effective development policies and interventions.

But it is not any kind of ‘development’ that is required, since de-velopment processes are themselves frequently a primary cause or driver of vulnerability. Pastoralists’ vulnerability in the Horn – and hence the current food security emergency affecting that region – has been partly caused by development programmes that have increasingly encouraged sedentary farming and enclosed private grazing land, such as commercial sugar plantations and the creation of a national park in Ethiopia. These have progressively prevented pastoralists from accessing their traditional grazing and watering areas. A 2007 survey of pastoral groups in Ethiopia’s Oromiya Re-gional State, for instance, found that among some groups, between 79% and 100% of households had lost their grazing and watering resources to non-pastoral uses and more than 90% of respondents indicated that they had experienced some fundamental changes in


14

54 S. Levine, ‘Here we go again: famine in the Horn of Africa’, Humanitarian Policy Group, 6/7/11, at http://blogs.odi.org.uk/blogs/main/archive/2011/07/06/horn_of_africa_fam-ine_2011_humanitarian_system.aspx. 55 Global Humanitarian Assistance, op cit., p.29. 56 Sara Pantuliano and Mike Wekesa, ‘Improving drought response in pastoral areas of Ethiopia: Somali and Afar Regions and Borena Zone of Oromiya Region’. Humanitarian Policy Group (Overseas Development Institute, London). Prepared for the CORE group (CARE, FAO, Save the Children UK and Save the Children US), January 2008.57 S. Pantualiano and S. Pavanello, op cit. 58 Ibid. & F. Grünewald, K. Robins et al., op cit. 59 S. Levine, op cit.

their mobility and grazing patterns through losing their traditional migration sites. The curtailment of seasonal migration combined with increasing livestock and human populations has created un-sustainable pressures on already fragile ecosystems due to over-grazing, with progressive soil degradation leading to a progressive decline in the quality of pasture and declines in animal productiv-ity. Conflict over grazing and water resources and boundary claims have further limited people’s mobility. The study concludes that land alienation, linked to agricultural and other forms of devel-opment, has significantly weakened the capacity of pastoralists to cope with drought through mobility and increased their exposure to food insecurity and famine.60

Vulnerability to climate-related hazards is all the greater where national disaster preparedness policies are weak or non-existent. At the time of the 2005-2006 drought in the Horn of Africa, there were no national preparedness plans in Somalia and Ethiopia, and contingency funds in Ethiopia and Kenya were too small to sup-port the rapid implementation of any contingency plans on a scale to have any substantial impact.61 As international actors also lacked any pre-existing emergency plans to work collectively, there was little consensus on the right balance between preventative liveli-hoods interventions and direct food assistance.62 In Pakistan, the ‘One UN’ initiative includes disaster risk management as one of five strategic priorities, and yet, according to the 2010 real-time evaluation of the flood response, little has been achieved in the way of contingency planning that establishes a clear division of labour between the government and international actors. Hence a reactive emergency response approach remains the predominant way of addressing disasters despite the perennial risk of severe and recur-rent disasters in Pakistan.63

Bangladesh provides a more positive example of national disaster preparedness policies integrated with development and recovery planning, which explicitly encompass vulnerability reduction. Here, national planning has included strategies to protect local livelihoods, with floods treated as an inevitable and predictable aspect of development challenges rather than isolated ‘natural’ events, and priority has been given to strengthening flood-prone households’ rehabilitation capacities.64 Mozambique is also widely referred to as a country that has developed effective and integrated

disaster preparedness policies that include annual contingency plans for floods, cyclones and droughts. Agencies involved in the response to floods and a cyclone in 2007, for example, were able to draw on the experience of a simulation exercise carried out the previous year by the National Institute of Disaster Management (IGNC). International donors have given strong support to the (IGNC), helping to fund the employment and training of 285 staff and equipping a national headquarters and several regional offices; the government has also benefited from capacity support provided by Guatemala.65

Examples of good practice as regards risk and vulnerability reduc-tion appear to be relatively few and far between, however. The in-ternational Hyogo Framework for Action 2005 – 2015, sponsored by the UN’s International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (ISDR), is intended to raise the profile and support for disaster risk reduc-tion at the national level, including early warning and the assess-ment and monitoring of risks and action to reduce underlying risk factors and strengthen preparedness and responses at all levels. The need for better disaster preparedness and long-term vulnerability reduction is also repeated in most evaluations of humanitarian response to climate-related and other disasters. Yet, there is little evidence yet of this rhetoric being translated into significant action on the ground. Chronic lack of funding for disaster risk reduction (DRR) and preparedness continues to hamper progress in many countries where, due to pre-existing poverty, governance prob-lems and other challenges affecting human security, vulnerability to climate-related and other hazards is particularly high. Current data on official aid flows indicates slowly increasing international funding of DRR, but still at only extremely low levels, with total re-ported assistance earmarked for DRR having reached only US$835 million in 2009, representing 0.5% of total ODA. Of the US$150 billion spent on the biggest humanitarian recipients over the past five years, only 1% of that has been reported as DRR.66 Although DRR activities are largely supported through humanitarian rather than development funders and institutions, these remain generally marginalized within the humanitarian system. In the response to Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar, for example, DRR was separated off to be managed by a separate working group rather than being main-streamed across the cluster system.67


15

60 Elias and F. Abdi, Putting Pastoralists on the Policy Agenda: Land Alienation in Southern Ethiopia, IIED Gatekeeper Paper No.145 (July 2010), International Institute for Environment and Development (London), 2010, at http://pubs.iied.org/pdfs/14599IIED.pdf. 61 F. Grünewald, K. Robins et al., op cit.; & S. Pantualiano and S. Pavanello, op cit. 62 S. Pantualiano and S. Pavanello, op cit.63 R. Palastro et al., op cit.64 K. Stokke, op cit., citing T. Beck, Learning Lessons from Disaster Recovery: The Case of Bangladesh. The World Bank (Washington, D.C.), 2005. 65 P. Harvey, op cit.66 Global Humanitarian Assistance, op cit., p.7. 67 D. Kauffman and S. Krüger, op cit.

Early recovery activities, central to any integrated disaster manage-ment and risk reduction agenda, suffer similarly from lack of fund-ing and poor prioritization and poor and/or confused implemen-tation across the humanitarian sector. A recent review of the state of the humanitarian system reports the lack of effective support to enable recovery of livelihoods as a persistent theme,68 and the most recent global evaluation of the cluster system highlights sys-temic obstacles to the functioning of early recovery clusters, which have been hampered by seemingly irresolvable debates about their scope and mandate and lack of relevant knowledge and expertise at field level.69

According to a 2007 meta-review of humanitarian responses to natural disasters, most evaluations leave the impression that most disaster-affected areas and groups receive humanitarian assistance without any appreciable reduction in their vulnerability.70 As ob-served in the previous German Marshal Fund background paper concerned with the potential implications of climate-induced mi-gration for humanitarian responses,71 there is a growing debate among humanitarian donors on how to better mainstream DRR within humanitarian and development assistance frameworks. Key challenges include the need for higher levels of funding from development as well as humanitarian donors, and funding cycles that are more sensitive to the realities and complexities of deliv-ering DRR and humanitarian assistance in difficult and turbulent environments. But uncertainty and inconsistency in policy priori-ties seem set to continue due to the complexity, scale and scope of the transitions and transformations needed in many countries that are most vulnerable to the negative human impacts of climate-related hazards. Many of the world’s poorest and most crisis-prone countries will continue to be disproportionately affected by cli-mate-related hazards such as droughts, floods and cyclones, with the resulting disasters and their impacts amplified by high levels of human vulnerability and lack of resources, institutions or ca-pacities for effective risk reduction.72 Growing pressures on the in-ternational humanitarian system to help prevent disasters, reduce vulnerability, and respond to humanitarian crises in these contexts will only serve to deepen uncertainty about the capacities of the international humanitarian system to respond sufficiently and ef-fectively.

Strengthening preparedness and reducing vulnerability: key messages and recommendations

As noted in the previous GMF background paper on the humanitarian challenges associated with climate-induced migration, people will continue to be most exposed to the risks of climate change and other stresses where formal governing institutions are particularly weak or distorted, especially where violence and poor governance have al-ready weakened their coping and survival capacities. Many so-called ‘fragile states’ already lack legitimacy and fail to provide adequate social protection to poor and vul-nerable populations, so any climate-related deterioration in human security has the potential to generate extreme welfare needs that are far beyond the capacities or will-ingness of these states to address. These state capacities may themselves be directly undermined by the broader economic and other impacts of climate change, further impeding the provision of even minimal basic services or any state support of livelihoods. In these contexts, hu-manitarian assistance that is designed and intended as a short-term instrument for meeting acute needs has often come to represent an inadequate long-term instrument for meeting chronic needs. Although agencies have often succeeded in delivering a range of basic services in these situations, this assistance has typically done little to bring about sustainable improvements in humanitarian indica-tors or any significant changes in the underlying condi-tions causing vulnerability. Meanwhile, the longer-term engagement of development actors is often hampered by continuing instability or conflict, or weak or illegitimate state institutions. More joined-up and effective engage-ment of humanitarian and development donors is also negatively affected by tightly defined and risk-averse sys-tems of funding and engagement. The preference for food aid, for example, appears to be determined often by pre-existing earmarking and a preference for the ‘safe option’, with its well understood mechanisms and expected short-term results.*

An increasing recognition in development circles of the need to address the welfare needs of populations in these


16

68 P. Harvey et al., op cit. 69 J. Steets, F. Grünewald et al., op cit. See also S. Bailey, S.Pavanello, S. Elhawary and S. O’Callaghan, Early recovery: an overview of policy debates and operational challenges, HPG Working Paper, Overseas Development Institute (London), 2009. 70 K. Stokke, op cit. 71 S. Collinson, op cit. 72 Informal Taskforce of the IASC et al., op cit.

difficult environments, and continuing preoccupation among humanitarian and development actors with bridg-ing the relief-to-development ‘gap’ reflect a longstanding concern with finding new and more effective mechanisms for international engagement in many fragile states. A recent meta-evaluation of humanitarian responses to natural disasters concluded that despite growing aware-ness of the need for disaster preparedness and vulnerabil-ity reduction, there are relatively few examples of good practice.** As observed in assessments of international humanitarian responses to acute food insecurity among pastoral communities in the Horn of Africa, there is a need for the protection or support of livelihoods to be placed at the centre of humanitarian (including emergen-cy) preparedness, planning and response mechanisms, and for vulnerability analysis to be incorporated more effectively into humanitarian needs assessments. In addi-tion, early warning systems should not simply be seen as an ‘emergency’ instrument, but rather as a means of man-aging predictable risks in areas prone to recurrent and/or chronic hazards and as a key instrument for informing and supporting efforts to protect lives and livelihoods.***

The mainstreaming of livelihoods-focused program-ming will require significantly improved integration and prioritisation of support for preparedness planning and early recovery and disaster risk reduction efforts across all areas of humanitarian funding, programming, coordi-nation and monitoring, with due attention given by do-nors and mixed-mission or multi-mandate operational agencies to the responsiveness of humanitarian funding and programming to chronic and ‘idiosyncratic’ vulner-ability to climate-related shocks and stresses, and to the links between early warning and contingency planning. Monitoring, assessment and early warning systems must be able to discern differences between populations and within particular population groups, and also predict how a particular trend or shock might affect food and liveli-hoods security and other key aspects of vulnerability. For this, there is a need for a good understanding of specific livelihood systems and frameworks that can help identify the importance of different indicators for households with different livelihoods and levels of wealth. For further im-provements in preparedness planning and more effective cross-sector responses to both long- and short-term vul-nerability to climate-related hazards and shocks, common

approaches are needed – supported by the clusters and other key humanitarian fora – to avoid agencies making decisions in isolation from one another. This, in turn, will require capacity-building on the development and utilisa-tion of livelihoods-based information systems among se-nior decision-makers in the humanitarian community.***

* S. Collinson, op cit.** K. Stokke, op cit.*** Getting it Right: Understanding livelihoods to reduce the vulnerability of pasto-ral communites, HPG Synthesis Paper, Overseas Development Institute (Humani-tarian Policy Group), 2009.

Conclusion

The relationships between human vulnerability and environmen-tal change and extreme weather events are extremely varied and complex. What is clear, however, is that the future humanitarian impacts of severe climate-related hazards and events will continue to be determined primarily by existing patterns of human vulner-ability: humanitarian disasters are caused as much by people’s vul-nerability to hazards as they are by the scale, intensity or severity of the hazards themselves. When levels of vulnerability are already high, the potential for climate-related and other hazards to further exacerbate people’s susceptibility and amplify the scale of disasters is all the greater.

The international humanitarian system thus faces a dual challenge: not only one of responding to climate-related disasters (often in countries already suffering humanitarian crises caused by conflict or other factors), but also of addressing the vulnerability that plays such a big part in determining the severity of humanitarian disas-ters when they occur. How responsive the system will be to crises and disasters in the future, and whether it will be effective in reduc-ing or minimizing vulnerability, are both questions that highlight the core limitations of the international humanitarian system as it currently functions. Responses are inevitably limited by the finan-cial and other resources needed to support them, and while levels of global humanitarian funding have increased substantially over recent decades, they remain insufficient and too uneven to meet escalating levels of humanitarian need across the world. While there are improvements to be made in how humanitarian actors address vulnerability – for example, by expanding and improving emergency livelihoods support – the sheer scale and complexity of human vulnerability in those countries most severely affected by complex humanitarian crises will remain beyond the overall ca-pacities of humanitarian actors to address in any comprehensive


17

way, particularly through short-term relief interventions.

Nonetheless, in many situations, international humanitarian re-sponses will continue to have a decisive impact on the scale, sever-ity and longer-term impacts of disasters resulting from severe cli-mate-related hazards. Lessons from previous famines in the Horn of Africa, for instance, point to a key role that humanitarian actors could and should play in helping to build the resilience of vulner-able populations to drought and other predictable climate-related hazards. The humanitarian system’s preparedness and capacities to respond to disasters therefore must be seen as a key component of the international climate change adaptation agenda, particularly in respect of countries affected by conflict or multiple interacting cri-ses where existing humanitarian needs are concentrated and where many international humanitarian agencies are often already heav-ily engaged. Scaling up disaster preparedness and response to se-vere climate-related hazards will depend on investment in climate change adaptation extending to some of the most turbulent and crisis-prone contexts where the implementation of conventional development or disaster preparedness measures are most problem-atic. The significance of humanitarian action as a key component of climate change adaptation may be hidden in these contexts, how-ever, by the difficulty of identifying obvious or direct causal links between climate-related trends or events and particular patterns of humanitarian need, given the complexity of factors causing vul-nerability and crisis. Whether or not humanitarian responses have any positive impacts in practice will depend to a large extent on whether key weaknesses are addressed that significantly hamper the effectiveness and impacts of the international humanitarian system. Priorities include:

• Improved connectedness, consistency, quality, scope and cov-erage of humanitarian needs assessments, including in urban areas where the humanitarian impacts of severe climate-relat-ed hazards may be increasingly concentrated in coming de-cades.

• Improved flexibility and suitability of humanitarian funding to highly varied and complex situations of vulnerability and need resulting from climate-related hazards and shocks across a broad range of contexts, including conflict-affected areas, and extending to both chronic and acute needs in countries of varying state capacity and ensuring that responses to major crises do not result in under-funding of low-profile, chronic and/or ‘forgotten’ crises.

• Improved strategic engagement, cooperation and/or coor-dination of international humanitarian actors with state and other national and local actors in countries facing the greatest humanitarian challenges due to climate-related hazards and shocks.

• Improved standards of international humanitarian engage-ment in major emergencies, including steps to prevent or mitigate the potential for harmful ‘swamping’ of major sud-den-onset emergencies by large numbers of international or-ganizations.

• Greater attention and support given to the protection and sup-port of livelihoods in humanitarian (including emergency) preparedness, planning and response mechanisms, and better integration of vulnerability analysis into humanitarian needs assessments and better use of early warning systems to manage responses to predictable risks in areas prone to recurrent and/or chronic hazards, including efforts to protect livelihoods.

• Prioritization of support for preparedness, planning, early re-covery and disaster risk reduction efforts across all areas of humanitarian funding, programming, coordination and mon-itoring, with due attention by donors and mixed-mission or multi-mandate operational agencies to chronic and ‘idiosyn-cratic’ vulnerability to climate-related shocks and stresses, and to the links between early warning and contingency planning.


18

Sarah Collinson is a Research Fellow and Program Leader of the Humanitarian

Policy Group, Overseas Development Institute.

The Overseas Development Institute (ODI) is Britain’s leading independent

think tank on international development and humanitarian issues.

PHOTO CREDIT: Floods in Ifo refugee camp, Dadaab,Kenya, UNHCR: B. Bannon,

December 2006.


19

Climate Change, NAPAs, Agriculture, and Migration in LDCs by Philip Martin

Climate Change and Migration: The UNFCCC Climate Negotiations and Global Forum on Migration and Developmentby Koko Warner and Susan Martin

Meeting the Challenges of Severe Climate-Related Hazards: A Review of the Effectiveness of the International Humanitarian Regimeby Sarah Collinson

InterAction, Washington, DC

Susan Martin, Institute for the Study of International Migration, School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University, Washington, DC (Co-Chair)

Koko Warner, Institute for Environment and Human Security, United Nations University, Bonn, Germany (Co-Chair)

Jared Banks and Suzanne Sheldon, Bureau for Population, Refugees and Migration, U.S. Department of State, Washington, DC

Regina Bauerochse Barbosa, Economy and Employment Depart-ment, Sector Project Migration and Development, German Technical Cooperation (GTZ), Eschborn, Germany

Alexander Carius, Moira Feil, and Dennis Tänzler, Adelphi Research, Berlin, Germany

Joel Charny, Refugees International, Washington, DC

Dimitria Clayton, Ministry for Intergenerational Affairs, Family, Women and Integration, State of North Rhine-Westphalia, Düsseldorf, Germany

Sarah Collinson, Overseas Development Institute, London, United Kingdom

Peter Croll, Ruth Vollmer, Andrea Warnecke, Bonn International Center for Conversion, Bonn Germany

Frank Laczko, International Organization for Migration, Geneva, Switzerland

Agustin Escobar Latapi, Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social (CIESAS), Guadalajara, Mexico

Michelle Leighton, Center for Law and Global Justice, University of San Francisco, San Francisco, California and Munich Re Foundation-UNU Chair in Social Vulnerability

Philip Martin, University of California, Migration Dialogue, Davis, California

Heather McGray, World Resources Institute, Washington, DC

Lorenz Peteresen, Climate Change Taskforce, German Technical Cooperation (GTZ), Eschborn, Germany

Aly Tandian, Groupe d’Etudes et de Recherches sur les Migrations (GERMS), Gaston Berger University, Senegal

Agnieszka Weinar, Directorate-General Justice, Freedom and Security, European Commissions, Brussels, Belgium

Astrid Ziebarth, German Marshall Fund of the United States, Berlin, Germany


Study team members List of Papers

Climate Change and Migration: Report of the Transatlantic Study Team September 2010

Developing Adequate Humanitarian Responsesby Sarah Collinson June 2010

Meeting the Challenges of Severe Climate-Related Hazards: A Review of the Effectiveness of the International Humanitarian Regimeby Sarah Collinson November 2012

Migration, the Environment and Climate Change: Assessing the Evidenceby Frank Laczko June 2010

Climate Change and Migration: Key Issues for Legal Protection of Migrants and Displaced Personsby Michelle Leighton June 2010

Climate Change, Agricultural Development, and Migrationby Philip Martin June 2010

Climate Change, NAPAs, Agriculture, and Migration LDCsby Philip Martin November 2012

Climate Change and International Migrationby Susan F. Martin June 2010

Climate Change, Migration and Adaptationby Susan F. Martin June 2010

Climate Change, Migration and Conflict: Receiving Communities under Pressure? by Andrea Warnecke, Dennis Tänzler and Ruth Vollmer June 2010 Assessing Institutional and Governance Needs Related to Environmental Change and Human Migrationby Koko Warner November 2012

Climate Change and Migration: The UNFCCC Climate Negotiations and Global Forum on Migration and Development by Koko Warner and Susan Martin November 2012

Transatlantic Study Teams

In 2008, GMF’s Immigration and Integration Program launched the Transatlantic Study Team on Climate-induced Migration. For the first time, this initiative systematically brought together researchers, practitioners, and policy representatives from both sides of the Atlantic to link two important debates and policy spheres that up until then were only sporadically linked: those of migration and those of climate change. For three consecutive years, the Study Team investigated the impact of environmental change on migration patterns, reviewed the current state of research, compiled existing data, convened opinion leaders on both sides of the Atlantic, went on study tours to affected or potentially affected regions, such as Mexico, Senegal and Bangladesh, and helped to advance the policy debate by feeding the findings into national policy meetings and international fora such as the Global Forum on Migration and Development and the International Climate Negotiations (COP). The Study Team laid the groundwork for future policy analyses and research. Led by Dr. Susan F. Martin, Georgetown University, and Dr. Koko Warner, UN University, the team consists of scholars, policymakers and practitioners from the migration and environmental communities.

The German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF) is a non-partisan American public policy and grantmaking institution dedicated to promoting better understanding and cooperation between North America and Europe on transatlantic and global issues. GMF does this by supporting individuals and institutions working in the transatlantic sphere, by convening leaders and members of the policy and business communities, by contributing research and analysis on transatlantic topics, and by providing exchange opportunities to foster renewed commitment to the transatlantic relationship. In addition, GMF supports a number of initiatives to strengthen democracies. Founded in 1972 through a gift from Germany as a permanent memorial to Marshall Plan assistance, GMF maintains a strong presence on both sides of the Atlantic. In addition to its headquarters in Washington, DC, GMF has seven offices in Europe: Berlin, Bratislava, Paris, Brussels, Belgrade, Ankara, and Bucharest.

The Institute for the Study of International Migration is based in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. Staffed by leading experts on immigration and refugee policy, the Institute draws upon the resources of Georgetown University faculty working on international migration and related issues on the main campus and in the law center. It conducts research and convenes workshops and conferences on immigration and refugee law and policies. In addition, the Institute seeks to stimulate more objective and well-documented migration research by convening research symposia and publishing an academic journal that provides an opportunity for the sharing of research in progress as well as finished projects.

The UN University established by the UN General Assembly in 1973, is an international community of scholars engaged in research, advanced training and the dissemination of knowledge related to pressing global problems. Activities focus mainly on peace and conflict resolution, sustainable development and the use of science and technology to advance human welfare. The University’s Institute for Environment and Human Security addresses risks and vulnerabilities that are the consequence of complex environmental hazards, including climate change, which may affect sustainable development. It aims to improve the in-depth understanding of the cause effect relationships to find possible ways to reduce risks and vulnerabilities. The Institute is conceived to support policy and decision makers with authoritative research and information.

meeting the challenges of severe climate-related hazards

Documents

humanitarian responses

areas of humanitarian

climate change

climateinduced migrationthe

support of livelihoods

improved connectedness

ground paper

improved strategic engagement