Humanitarianism and climate change: Let's rethink the future

Recalling the intervention of a survivor of Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines at the recent World Humanitarian Summit regional consultation for East Asia, Jemilah Mahmood calls in her Devex article to put people at the center of the climate change (Paris 2015), disaster risk reduction (Sendai 2015) and humanitarian action (Istanbul 2016) processes and to create a cohesive approach to reduce the underlying causes of vulnerability to climate shocks.

"To meet the humanitarian challenges in the decades to come, we must put disaster and conflict-affected people in the driver’s seat," she writes. "Although effective humanitarian response is critical, climate and development finance must step up to robustly support prevention and mitigation activities — and ultimately build resilience."