Clearer understanding between climate scientists and humanitarian policy-makers must be developed now to mitigate the loss of millions of lives in humanitarian hazards which will threaten our children’s and  grandchildren’s generations.

The call for an effective two-way dialogue between scientists and humanitarians  emerged from a discussion at the Royal Society in London last night, when the UN’s Assistant Secretary-General, Margareta Wahlström, and the leading Oxford University climate scientist, Professor Tim Palmer, debated how humanitarians could take on board scientific uncertainty and how scientists could better inform policy-makers about extreme weather threats.

“Emerging science can directly improve the prevention, preparedness and response capacities of humanitarian organisations to mitigate the worst effects of future events such as Haiti , Chile and Qinghai,” says Dr. Randolph Kent, of the Humanitarian Futures Programme at King’s (HFP) College London, which co-hosted the Royal Society discussion entitled: Pushing the Extremes. 

Margareta Wahlström highlighted the need for humanitarians to develop sufficient understanding of climate science to be able to ask the right questions of the scientists.   And she told a large audience of scientists and humanitarians that it was vital for those with a role or responsibility for human kind to identify the climate information needs of policy-makers and to explore the scientific information currently available and inform the focus of future research.

The Royal Society discussion is part of an initiative led by the HFP to develop effective dialogue between the two sectors through exchange events which allow scientists and humanitarians to discuss freely and frankly, how best to sustain collaboration between the two sides.