Climate change is a reality and a very important threat that we will face over a long period of time but it’s not the only threat we face. There are a lot of vulnerabilities we need to be sensitive to.  I hope the humanitarian sector doesn’t see its world being shaped by climate change alone.  Climate change is a major issue and perhaps reflects a degree of intellectual laziness because if we probe harder there are a great many deeply serious vulnerabilities.  What happens when we have a cyber attack and all systems break down?

Take for example the Overseas Development Institute and its Humanitarian Policy Group. They are both outstanding breakthrough organisations.  But they don’t do things that we do and vice versa.  

We hope the HFP is sensitive in the comments it makes on key issues facing the humanitarian sector.  We point up issues we feel organisations need to address but we show that we recognise there’s an explanation for the situation.  For example, there’s an explanation why many humanitarian, multilateral and non-governmental organisations have become far more managerial because there is great concern about accountability.

The corporate sector has a great deal to show the humanitarian sector in terms of willingness to explore innovative ideas... in terms of collaborating with people’s groups who’re not obvious partners. 

The HFP has at the very least opened and highlighted a debate on strategic leadership and what individual organisations need in a strategic leader.  We ask, what is the enabling environment that a strategic leader needs?  

It’s fascinating to see the self-confession in the humanitarian sector – that, for example, we’re not very good at leadership.  We’ve become managers. Our convictions, our perspectives, our advocacy have now become supplanted by managerialism which focuses more on institutional survival than survival of those who are under threat.  The sector, in that sense, has become more corporate.

If we don’t engage in the long-term perspective we’ll fail to mitigate the worst excesses of new and more complex crises.

The vast majority of the organisations in the humanitarian sector are rightly focused on the immediate.  In order words, “How effective was our response in Haiti.   How good are we at linking conflict prevention with humanitarian response?  What are the roles of the military in a peace-building situation and other vital questions which are dealt with very effectively by a range of organisations in the UK and elsewhere?   But very few are really asking what’s on the horizon and beyond?  What do potential crises look like in 20 years’ time?  So what is the HFP niche? 

My perspective was shaped by my Rwandan experience in 94-95 after the genocide there. I arrived as the UN coordinator for the humanitarian operation and really thought I knew what to do in that kind of emergency.  I’d been there and done that in a lot of assignments.  Two weeks later I realised how little I did know and understood.   The more I reflected the more I realised the humanitarian sector had been established for short-term response. We were the sheriff or cowboys with our six guns at the ready in a good cause but without much forethought.