Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gvvz8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T08:19:47.335Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Megatrends and the future of humanitarian action

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 September 2012

Elizabeth Ferris
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article assesses the implications of six megatrends for humanitarian action in the future, including changes in demography, technology and science, economics, political power, climate, and patterns of conflict. The interaction of these trends suggests a particularly complex landscape for future humanitarian response. For example, conflict in the future is more likely to take place in cities that are growing as a result of economic and environmental factors. Social media are contributing to both political change and humanitarian response, while changes in global political and economic power are likely to influence the way in which the international humanitarian system is financed and supported.

Type
New Threats, New Responses
Information
International Review of the Red Cross , Volume 93 , Issue 884: The future of humanitarian action , December 2011 , pp. 915 - 938
Copyright
Copyright © International Committee of the Red Cross 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 See Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development, Our Common Future, transmitted to the General Assembly as an Annex to UN Doc. A/42/427, 1987, available at: http://www.un-documents.net/wced-ocf.htm (last visited 11 January 2012).

2 See for example Gelsdorf, Kirsten, Global Challenges and their Impact on International Humanitarian Action, OCHA Occasional Policy Briefing Series No. 1, New York: OCHAGoogle Scholar, Policy Development and Studies Branch, January 2010; and Humanitarian Horizons: A Practitioner's Guide to the Future, Tufts University, Feinstein Center, 2010, available at: http://sites.tufts.edu/feinstein/2010/humanitarian-horizons-a-practitioners-guide-to-the-future (last visited December 2011). This was a joint initiative of several non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to identify future trends.

3 UN Population Division, World Population Prospects, 2010 revision, 2011, available at: http://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/index.htm (last visited January 2012).

4 K. Gelsdorf, above note 2, p. 6.

5 Goldstone, Jack A., ‘The new population bomb: the four megatrends that will change the world’, in Foreign Affairs, Vol. 89, No. 1, January–February 2010, pp. 31–43Google Scholar.

6 UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, World Population Until 2300, New York, 2004, p. 22Google Scholar.

7 Longman, Phillip, ‘The world will be more crowded – with old people’, in Foreign Policy, September–October 2011, p. 87Google Scholar.

8 See, for example, J. A. Goldstone, above note 5, pp. 31–43.

9 P. Longman, above note 7, p. 87.

10 Gillis, Justin and Dugger, Celia W., ‘UN forecasts 10.1 billion people by century's end’, in New York Times, 3 May 2011, available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/04/world/04population.html (last visited December 2011).Google Scholar

11 J. A. Goldstone, above note 5.

12 K. Gelsdorf, above note 2, p. 5.

13 UN Human Settlements Programme, State of the World's Cities 2008/2009: Harmonious Cities, 2008, available at: http://www.unhabitat.org/pmss/listItemDetails.aspx?publicationID=2562 (last visited December 2011). See also Inter-agency Standing Committee (IASC), Final Strategy for Meeting Humanitarian Challenges in Urban Areas, 2010, p. 10, available at: http://www.citiesalliance.org/ca/sites/citiesalliance.org/files/CA_Images/IASC_Strategy_Meeting_Humanitarian_Challenges_in_Urban_Areas%5B1%5D.pdf (last visited December 2011).

14 P. Longman, above note 7, p. 88.

15 See Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Urban Food Security, 10–13 June 2002, available at: www.fao.org/ag/magazine/pdf/ag01.pdf (last visited January 2012).

16 UN Human Settlements Programme, The Challenge of Slums: Global Report on Human Settlements 2003, Earthscan, London, 2003Google Scholar.

17 Patel, Ronak P. and Burke, Thomas F., ‘Urbanization: an emerging humanitarian disaster’, in New England Journal of Medicine, Vol. 361, No. 8, 2009, pp. 742–743CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

18 Jones, Kate et al. , ‘Global trends in emerging infectious disease’, in Nature, Vol. 451, February 2008, pp. 990–993CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 US–Japan Research Institute (USJI), Reconstruction after the Great East Japan Earthquake, Seminar 2: ‘Reconstruction and beyond: the Great East Japan earthquake and its impact on an aging Japan’, Washington DC, 9 September 2011, recording available online at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cXNQFKOZkk (last visited December 2011).

20 ‘Robotic surgery of “tremendous benefit” to patients’, in Science Daily, 12 January 2011, available at: www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/01/110112161000.htm (last visited December 2011); Mark Tran, ‘Could donkey ambulances save lives in poor countries?’, in The Guardian, 8 September 2011, available at: www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/poverty-matters/2011/sep/08/appropriate-medical-devices-poor-countries?intcmp=122 (last visited December 2011).

21 Moreover, the diseases associated with developed countries – diabetes, hypertension, obesity – are likely to become more prevalent.

22 Euromonitor Global Market Research Blog, ‘Q&A: the importance and prospects of mobile telephony’, 11 May 2011, available at: http://blog.euromonitor.com/2011/05/qa-the-importance-and-prospects-of-mobile-telephony.html (last visited December 2011).

23 Econfuture, ‘Google's cloud robotics strategy could accelerate progress toward truly advanced robots’, 2 January 2012, available at: http://econfuture.wordpress.com/2012/01/02/googles-cloud-robotics-strategy-could-accelerate-progress-toward-truly-advanced-robots/ (last visited January 2012).

24 XXX, Ayesha and Khanna, Parag, ‘Technology will take on a life of its own’, in Foreign Policy, September–October 2011, pp. 67–72Google Scholar.

25 On the Watan prepaid debit card system in Pakistan, see UNHCR/Protection Cluster Working Group, The WATAN Scheme for Flood Relief: Protection Highlights 2010–2011, http://floods2010.pakresponse.info/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=_SpKC9jJClY%3D&tabid=206&mid=1604 (last visited December 2011); Joe Mwihia, ‘Kenyans use mobile phones to send drought aid money’, in Associated Press, 29 August 2011, available at: www.usatoday.com/tech/news/story/2011-08-29/Kenyans-use-mobile-phones-to-send-drought-aid-money/50176520/1 (last visited December 2011). Two of the US-based non-profit organizations that have organized several text-based giving campaigns benefiting humanitarian relief organizations in the wake of crises around the world are the Give Foundation (www.mgivefoundation.org) and the Mobile Giving Foundation (www.mobilegiving.org).

26 On the important role of new media in the Arab Spring, see Michael S. Doran, ‘The impact of new media: the revolution will be tweeted’, in Kenneth M. Pollack et al., The Arab Awakening: America and the Transformation of the Middle East, Brookings Institution Press, Washington, DC, 2011, pp. 39–46. As Doran notes, ‘It was the book Smart Mobs, published in 2002, that first explored the idea that user-generated mass communications technologies enable leaderless groups to organize collective action’ (p. 42).

27 Singer, Peter W., Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century, Penguin Press HC, New York, 2009Google Scholar.

28 Ibid.

29 Krepinevich, Andrew, ‘Get ready for the democratization of destruction’, in Foreign Policy, September–October 2011, pp. 80–81Google Scholar.

30 On Stuxnet, see Porche, Isaac R. et al. , A Cyberworm That Knows No Boundaries, Rand Corporation, 2011Google Scholar, available at: www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/occasional_papers/2011/RAND_OP342.pdf (last visited December 2011); Michael Schrage, ‘Stuxnet was about what happened next’, in Financial Times, 16 February 2011, available at: www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/c8142b5a-3a04-11e0-a441-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1iWzVPYTy (last visited December 2011); William J. Broad, John Markoff, and David E. Sanger, ‘Israeli test on worm called crucial in Iran nuclear delay’, in New York Times, 15 January 2011, available at: www.nytimes.com/2011/01/16/world/middleeast/16stuxnet.html?pagewanted=all (last visited December 2011). The security technology company ESET reported 100,000 new malware samples per day in 2009 on 500,000 PCs; see ESET, ‘Proactive protection’, available at: www.eset.com/me/business/whyeset/technology (last visited December 2011), and eWeek, ‘Compromised computers host an average of 3 malware families’, 3 September 2009, available at: http://securitywatch.eweek.com/online_malware/compromised_computers_play_host_an_average_of_3_malware_families.html (last visited December 2011). For analysis on cybercrime, see Noah Shachtman, ‘Pirates of the ISPs: tactics for turning online crooks into international pariahs’, Brookings Institution, July 2011, available at: www.brookings.edu/~/media/Files/rc/papers/2011/0725_cybersecurity_shachtman/0725_cybersecurity_shachtman.pdf (last visited December 2011).

31 Some experts assert that the threat of bioterrorism is serious and imminent: see, for example, The Commission on the Prevention of WMD Proliferation and Terrorism, World at Risk: The Report of the Commission on the Prevention of WMD Proliferation and Terrorism, December 2008. In contrast, the Scientists Working Group on Biological and Chemical Weapons called the threat of bioterrorism ‘exaggerated’, in Scientists Working Group on Biological and Chemical Weapons, Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, ‘Biological threats: a matter of balance’, in Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 2 February 2010; for this opinion, see also, Scientists Working Group on Biological and Chemical Weapons, Biological Threats: A Matter of Balance, 26 January 2010. Also see Laurie Garrett, ‘Flu season’, in Foreign Policy, 5 January 2012, http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/01/05/flu_season (last visited January 2012).

32 These technologies are all presently being used. See for example, UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Relief 2.0: The Future of Information Sharing in Humanitarian Emergencies, March 2011; Stauffacher, Daniel et al. (eds), Peacebuilding in the Information Age: Sifting Hype from Reality, ICT4Peace FoundationGoogle Scholar, January 2011, available at: http://ict4peace.org/updates/peacebuilding-in-the-information-age-sifting-hype-from-reality (last visited December 2011).

33 United Nations Development Programme, The Human Development Report 2010, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2010, p. 28Google Scholar.

34 Ibid., p.42.

35 K. Gelsdorf, above note 2, p. 4.

36 Ibid., pp. 4 and 18.

37 J. Gillis and C. W. Dugger, above note 10.

38 Kaplan, Robert D., ‘The South China Sea is the future of conflict’, in Foreign Policy, September–October 2011, pp. 76–84Google Scholar.

39 Slaughter, Anne-Marie, ‘Problems will be global – and solutions will be too’, in Foreign Policy, September–October 2011, p. 89Google Scholar.

40 Global Humanitarian Assistance, GHA Report 2011, Development Initiatives, July 2011, pp. 4, 6, and 13; Global Humanitarian Assistance, Non-DAC Donors and Humanitarian Aid, Changing Trends, Development Initiatives, July 2011, p. 8.

41 Global Humanitarian Assistance, Non-DAC Donors, above note 40, p. 8.

42 Ibid. The outlier year was 2005, when China contributed US$65.8 million in international humanitarian aid, largely in response to the Indian Ocean tsunami.

43 See Global Humanitarian Assistance, Country Profile: China – Who, What, How, available at: http://www.globalhumanitarianassistance.org/countryprofile/china (last visited 9 September 2011).

44 Ibid.

45 Central Intelligence Agency, ‘Luxembourg’, in The World Factbook, August 2011, available at: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/lu.html (last visited 9 September 2011).

46 Global Humanitarian Assistance, GHA Report 2011, above note 40, p. 101.

47 See United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN OCHA), Financial Tracking Service, available at: http://fts.unocha.org/pageloader.aspx?page=search-reporting_display&CQ=cq090911173656bWIhVKbnSS (last visited 9 September 2011).

48 R. D. Kaplan, above note 38.

49 As Clay Shirky has noted, social media, while they have not always successfully altered political landscapes, were a catalyst for the ousting of the Philippine President Joseph Estrada in 2001, followed by that of the Spanish Prime Minister José María Aznar in 2004 and of the Communist Party in Moldova in 2009; see Shirky, Clay, ‘The political power of social media: technology, the public sphere, and political change’, in Foreign Affairs, Vol. 90, No. 1, January–February 2011, pp. 28–41Google Scholar. At the same time, the use of social media can be used by governments to track and crack down on protesters.

50 Sen, Amartya, Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1981Google Scholar.

51 See UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), ‘2050: climate change will worsen the plight of the poor’, 1 October 2009, available at: http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/35831/icode/ (last visited December 2011); see also FAO, ‘Agriculture to 2050: the challenges ahead’, 12 October 2009, available at: http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/36193/icode/ (last visited December 2011).

52 K. Gelsdorf, above note 2, p. 18.

53 See Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC Fourth Assessment Report: Climate Change 2007, Working Group II: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability, 2007Google Scholar, available at: http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/syr/en/contents.html (last visited December 2011).

54 International Institute for Environment and Development, cited by K. Geldsdorf, above note 2, p. 17.

55 Seo, John, ‘Everything will be too big to fail’, in Foreign Policy, September–October 2011, p. 75Google Scholar.

56 Ferris, Elizabeth and Petz, Daniel, A Year of Living Dangerously: A Review of Natural Disasters in 2010, Brookings–LSE Project on Internal Displacement, The Brookings Institution, Washington, DC, 2011Google Scholar.

57 Barber, Benjamin R., ‘Jihad vs. McWorld’, in Atlantic Magazine, March 1992Google Scholar.

58 While the number of civilian casualties may increase, the fact that the world's population is growing makes it likely that civilian casualties will be a smaller percentage than is presently the case.

59 Lacey, Mark, ‘For more of Mexico's wealthy, cost of living includes guards’, in New York Times, 16 November 2008Google Scholar, available at: www.nytimes.com/2008/11/17/world/americas/17mexico.html?pagewanted=all (last visited December 2011).

60 Norton, Robert J., ‘Feral cities: problem today, battlefields tomorrow?’, in Marine Corps University Journal, Vol. 1, No. 1, Spring 2010, p. 60Google Scholar.

61 P. Singer, above note 27, p. 286.

62 See, for example, Collinson, Sarah et al. , States of Fragility: Stabilisation and Its Implications for Humanitarian Action, Humanitarian Policy Group Working Paper, Overseas Development Initiative, London, May 2001Google Scholar.

63 P. Singer, above note 27.

64 See for example, Howard, Russell D., Sawyer, Reid, and Bajema, Natasha (eds), Terrorism and Counterterrorism: Understanding the New Security Environment: Readings and Interpretations, McGraw-Hill/Dushkin, Dubuque, IA, 2004Google Scholar. Parachini, John, ‘Putting WMD terrorism into perspective’, in Washington Quarterly, Fall 2003, Vol. 26, No. 4, pp. 37–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For an analysis of trends in 2011, see Sunny Peter, ‘Review of Maplecroft's “Terrorism Risk Index 2011”’, available at: http://foreignpolicyblogs.com/2010/12/04/review-of-maplecrofts-%E2%80%9Cterrorism-risk-index-2011%E2%80%9D/ (last visited December 2011).

65 For example, see Sara Pantuliano et al., ‘Counter-terrorism and humanitarian action’, HPG Policy Brief No. 43, Overseas Development Institute, October 2011, available at: http://www.odi.org.uk/resources/docs/7347.pdf (last visited December 2011).

66 See Vanda Felbab-Brown, ‘Bringing the state to the slum: confronting organized crime and urban violence in Latin America’, 5 December 2011, The Brookings Institution, available at: www.brookings.edu/papers/2011/1205_latin_america_slums_felbabbrown.aspx (last visited January 2012).

67 P. Singer, above note 27.

68 The European Union has sought to implement the concept of ‘linking relief to rehabilitation and development’, referred to as LRRD, to address the gap between humanitarian aid and development aid; see further, European Union, ‘Linking relief, rehabilitation and development (LRRD)’, available at: http://europa.eu/legislation_summaries/humanitarian_aid/r10002_en.htm (last visited 10 December 2011); see also ‘European Union humanitarian aid policy in the world’, in Australian Development Review, 18 March 2011, available at: www.theadr.com.au/wp/?p=347 (last visited December 2011).

69 Personal communication with author, Port-au-Prince, January 2011.

70 Malcolm Lucard, Iolanda Jaquemet and Benoît Carpentier, ‘Out of sight, out of mind’, in Magazine of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, No. 2, 2011, available at: http://www.redcross.int/EN/mag/magazine2011_2/18-23.html (last visited 10 December 2011).

71 Katherine Haver and Conor Foley, International Dialogue on Strengthening Partnership in Disaster Response: Bridging National and International Support, Background Paper No. 2, Regional and International Initiatives, September 2011, available at: www.ifrc.org/PageFiles/90118/Background%20paper%202.pdf (last visited December 2011).

72 Author's notes, Port-au-Prince, January 2011.