The Humanitarian Futures Programme (HFP) at King’s College, London, is cited by IRIN as one of a few groups which is attempting to bridge the information gap between climate scientists and those who most need to make use of science – farmers and agriculturists in disaster-prone districts.
HFP’s joint initiative with Christian Aid in eastern Kenya is having a positive impact on protecting lives and livelihoods by combining traditional knowledge with science-based forecasts that help farmers make better decisions about the crops they can grow, says Christian Aid Climate Adviser, Richard Ewbank.
A failure by policymakers with humanitarian roles and responsibilities to heed warning signs of drought, famine and others threats is causing unnecessary loss of life and livelihoods according to the Senegalese climate social scientist, Arame Tall.
Tall told the BBC World Today programme that policymakers were not listening to warnings from scientists and people in communities facing humanitarian hazards. She said it should be intuitive for policymakers to invest in prevention rather than cure.
The humanitarian sector should learn a lesson from the Oscars by using the media and the influence of prominent women in the Diaspora, to play an important role in tackling big humanitarian issues.
Dr. Jemilah Mahmood, Senior Research Fellow at the Humanitarian Futures Programme (HFP), King’s College, London, issued her call to mark International Women’s Day: “This year’s Oscars are a perfect example of how women’s issues can be championed using film as a media tool to highlight certain sensitive issues and produce tangible, sustainable change.”
The importance of a joint initiative to enhance humanitarian responsiveness to new types of crises in West Africa – combining the expertise of the Madrid-based humanitarian organisation, DARA, the African Leadership Centre (ALC) and the Humanitarian Futures Programme (HFP) at King’s College, London – is highlighted in a short film with the HFP Director, Randolph Kent.
Risk aversion causing inertia in the face of looming humanitarian crises is widespread among policymakers at all levels - governmental, intergovernmental and aid agencies......
Support for Sir John Holmes’s call for investment in Disaster Risk Reduction as a better option than the equivalent on response....
2012 should be seen as the beginning of a new humanitarian dawn. Randolph Kent told BBC Radio 4's 'Today Programme'...
“Some of the most favoured words in the humanitarian lexicon reflect potential stagnation in creative thinking and mind-closure to the greater threats of the future”. Dr. Randolph Kent, Director of the Humanitarian Futures Programme (HFP) at King’s College, London stigmatises ‘practical’ and ‘academic’ as “foul words for the future”...
The corporate sector, military, diaspora, scientists, technologists and non-state activists, will become key humanitarian actors providing an innovative humanitarianism for the 21st Century, HFP Director tells the Humanitarian Innovation Fund.
As world population reaches the day (31st October 2011) when it is estimated there are 7-billion humans on the planet, HFP’s Senior Research fellow, Dr. Jemilah Mahmood, tells The Independent Newspaper that numbers are not the issue to focus on, but how we reduce vulnerability by the way we prepare, reduce risks and respond to humanitarian crises.
People on the ground facing some of the greatest humanitarian hazards have important coping mechanisms which are often ignored by those planning preparedness strategies. The strong message was given to the BBC’s ‘One Planet’ programme by HFP’s Senior Research Fellow, Dr. Jemilah Mahmood, based in Kuala Lumpur.
A warning that “the most basic kind of preparedness for a severe pandemic” is not being undertaken by governments across the world has been given by the Save The Children International Programmes Director, Rudy Von Bernuth.....
HFP's latest film, 'Humanitarian Futures - New Challenges, New Opportunities', is featured on the humanitarian news blog from Thomson Reuters.
AlertNet interviews Randolph Kent on his message that resilience is the key to effective humanitarian action. Dr. Kent told the Reuters news service that professionals dealing with humanitarian needs – from aid workers to policy makers – need to get better at anticipating new and different future crises which are likely to affect rich countries as much as poor ones.
HFP Director, Randolph Kent, presented a short film to the Heads of NGO agencies in Ottawa on 26 October, as part of his address to a forum of Canadian government and operational humanitarian agencies with a mandate to respond to humanitarian emergencies worldwide.
AlertNet highlights Randolph Kent, Director of the Humanitarian Futures Programme at King's College, London, and his contribution to the World Disasters Report.
Randolph Kent's blog. The Debating Chamber.
Somalia should be seen as a state with a lot of positive factors that is allowing society not only to survive conflict, famine and poor government, but to grow.
HFP’s African initiative to develop an effective dialogue between climate scientists and communities facing high risk of drought, flooding and other climate-related crises, has been marked by the signing of an ‘historic’ agreement – the first ever signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between a National Met Office and a humanitarian organisation in the West Africa:
New Scientist publishes the views of HFP's Director who asks why once again the drought-hit Horn of Africa has succumbed so rapidly to famine when evidence of today’s crisis had first loomed in 2008. Randolph Kent’s blog urges a new strategic vision to break the deadly cycle of drought-led famine in East Africa:
A new report on Somalia by the Humanitarian Futures Programme (HFP) at King's College, London, reveals a society functioning in significant and unexpected ways that Western observers fail to see.
Worldwide governments, multinational, bi-lateral and regional organisations with a humanitarian role or responsibility, must act in the face of widespread famine in East Africa to prove their commitment to a new approach to humanitarian action, says the Director of the Humanitarian Futures Programme at King’s College, London.
A warning that the same pattern of shock, blame, promises of commitment and then no action, must not be repeated in the aftermath of the current crisis in the Horn of Africa, was given in a BBC World Today interview with HFP Director, Randolph Kent, on Tuesday 26 July, 2011. He told the programme there had been serious failures in monitoring the evidence that the drought and famine now affecting more than 10 million people in East Africa, was on its way.
The tragedy in the Horn of Africa today can be the impetus for a new approach to dealing with humanitarian crises. InterAction’s ‘AidBuzz’ blog quotes Randolph Kent, Director of the Humanitarian Futures Programme at King’s College, London, issuing a challenge to the UK government to demonstrate its intention to fulfill its recent statement of commitment to reform its future approach to humanitarian action:
The intensity and frequency of humanitarian crises are on their way up and there is little doubt that the types and impacts of humanitarian crises and their dimensions and dynamics will continue to increase exponentially over the coming decades. Three recent mega-disasters – the earthquake in Haiti, massive flooding in Pakistan, and the recent earthquake and tsunami in Japan – collectively suggest the need for new approaches and changing mind-sets for identifying and dealing with future crises and emerging threats: the what might bes of the future....
Who is the humanitarian sector of tomorrow? Is it Oxfam or big business? HFP Director, Randolph Kent, asks and answers this challenging question in an interview with DARA, the Madrid-based humanitarian organisation committed to improving the quality and effectiveness of aid for vulnerable populations. Randolph Kent says the humanitarian sector must make a fundamental change to think more strategically, to be more anticipatory and more collaborative with new humanitarian actors, if it is to be fit to meet the new dynamics and dimensions of more frequent mega-crises in the future, such as Japan and Pakistan?
The international community has an abiding moral obligation to millions of highly vulnerable people to get an effective dialogue going between governments, scientists and humanitarian policy-makers, years ahead of the type of disaster which is hitting the Horn of Africa right now. HFP was asked by the on-line news service, ThinkAfricaPress, to comment on what could be done to ensure that famine and drought which is killing and threatening so many in Ethiopia, Somalia, Djibouta and Kenya today, was not repeated in years to come.
The critical role science must play in tackling drought risks has been highlighted by the Humanitarian Futures Programme (HFP), which is one of the contributors to the 2011 Global Assessment Report (GAR11) published by the United Nations Disaster Risk Reduction Agency, UNISDR.
Improved use of climate information to inform development, adaptation and disaster risk management will be the theme at the launch of the third issue of the Climate and Society Publication series in Washington DC....
The key recommendations of the Ashdown Review of humanitarian emergency planning – that the international community could use money more effectively to anticipate natural disasters and conflict and to improve resilience through better quality infrastructure, support and management plans....
The 2011 international humanitarian conference in Dubai has been warned that the humanitarian sector needs to look at new approaches and ways to enhance its capacities through new partnerships and innovative practices, in order to deal with increasing types, dimensions and dynamics of humanitarian crises.....
Working under a military umbrella in a conflict zone such as Libya can distort the neutral role in which humanitarians are seen.
The warning came from the Director of the Humanitarian Futures Programme, Dr. Randolph Kent, in a BBC World Service broadcast....
The international community must learn from the mega-crisis in Japan to think more creatively about the interconnected nature of different crisis drivers, if the humanitarian system is to gear up for the more diverse, intense and frequent hazards of the future.....
As multiple crises in the Middle East and Japan dominate the news headlines, the Humanitarian Futures Programme (HFP) is publishing the findings of a study to highlight the critical role of the corporate sector in anticipating and planning for future types of humanitarian crisesare of increasing relevance....
As crisis upon crisis unfolds in Japan, the warning that the world increasingly faces new types of disaster of greater intensity, frequency, dimensions and dynamics, is reflected in this review of statements from the Humanitarian Futures Programme, published by UK and international new media over recent months....
In celebration of 100 Years of International Women's Day, HFP asked three prominent women to give their views on the issues which confront women in particular at this time in the early 21st Century....
The conflict sweeping across the Arab world will set a new standard for the humanitarian community to show how it operates in highly political situations and makes clear the divide between humanitarian aims of saving people’s lives and the political objectives of governments which may be to topple regimes they regard as no longer legitimate....
In the evolving world of humanitarian action, there is a paradox too rarely noticed by the expanding numbers of humanitarian professionals....
China's anticipated drought could pose a major threat to Africa's food security. Analysts in China and among expert international organisations anticipate that a major drought will severely affect China's 2011 grain and livestock production. If it happens, China will assert its weight on international commodity markets, and with its economic might and two decades of enormous investment in African agriculture, the continent's food security will be severely tested. There are at least three serious scenarios...
Experts responsible for humanitarian action have a blind spot when it comes to the very people they want to help – a blind spot that is undermining their ability to anticipate, prepare, and respond to humanitarian crises....
Governments are taken to task by Randolph Kent on Reuters' AlertNet, for talking "accountability rhetoric" which overlooks the most important constituency of all - vulnerable communities everywhere. He argues that governments seem to think they are only accountable to the tax-paying public...
HFP tells PROSPECT Magazine that disaster planning requires a new dialogue between humanitarian policymakers and scientists if the world is ever going to rise to the challenge of greater crises...
Millennium Development Goal exercise is contentious but it sets a challenge to humanitarians to be practical and aim high...
Strong criticism of the UK government’s plan to reduce budget support for science has been voiced by HFP Director, Randolph Kent, who warns that cutting funds for science will increase the difficulty for collaboration between scientists and humanitarian policymakers, who need to work together on strategies for mitigating future humanitarian hazards.
AlertNet, the Reuters’ on-line news service, reports on the challenge issued to the humanitarian sector by Randolph Kent, to face the dilemma of whether to put principles before people’s lives....
A warning that the world is creating a series of crisis drivers which impact on each other, has been reported by GlobalPost, the news service dedicated to expanding knowledge between nations....
The dreadful devastation in Pakistan is a frightening example of how water, as a crisis driver, threatens vulnerable communities in one of the most hazard-prone regions of the world...
BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme invites HFP to explain why it is critical of the United Nations in an open letter from the HFP Director, published on World Humanitarian Day.
A strong call for the United Nations to be more daring and speculative about future threats to human kind...
Policy-makers, political and humanitarian, do not have a grasp of the kinds of threats the world will face in the future...
A Pakistan government warning that a huge lake in the N. East Hunza Valley is about to engulf dozens of villages is one type of threat forewarned in a report about THE THIRD POLE region just published by the HFP...
The UN news agency, IRIN asks whether the Pakistan floods could be a taste of things to come and highlights warnings in The Third Pole report...
The Government’s Chief Scientist, Professor Sir John Beddington, has described our new Third Pole report as a “terrific initiative” and he calls for a dialogue between scientists and humanitarian policy-makers to plan for the future...
BBC television and radio as well as the high-profile on-line humanitarian news network, Reuters AlertNet, gave global news coverage to an important debate on the value of climate science to humanitarian policy-makers...
One of the most revealing consequences of BP’s oil spillage is that it demonstrates how vulnerable we are globally and how little effort is being made to anticipate and prepare...
