Planning From the Future
Despite impressive growth and institutionalization, the humanitarian system risks being outpaced by new threats and vulnerabilities linked to conflict, technology, and natural disasters. As the system struggles to adapt to the social and political changes spawned by globalization, the way it is organized and its framework for decision-making risks becoming obsolete.
Unless urgent steps are taken, humanitarian action will lose its relevance as a global system for saving and protecting the lives of at-risk populations.
The project was a collaboration between Kings College London, the Humanitarian Policy Group at the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), and the Feinstein International Center.
The project aims to influence the direction of ‘non-traditional’ and traditional humanitarian actors to help them deal with a world that is rapidly changing and potentially growing more vulnerable. It lays out the reasons and evidence for why the system needs to fundamentally change and suggests measures to adapt to an ever more complex and uncertain future. To do so, it draws upon the lessons of the past, captures the rapidly changing landscape of the present, and proposes ways to prepare for a world in which the types, dimensions, and dynamics of threats that produce humanitarian needs will increase – in some instances, exponentially.
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