admin November 7th, 2011
African countries prone to floods, droughts and cyclones – and that’s most of them – had another dose of bad news last week when the latest global carbon emissions data was released by the US Department of Energy.
Emissions in 2010 jumped by the biggest amount on record – so much for the fine words of the Copenhagen and Cancun summits.
This means that levels of greenhouse gases are higher than the worst-case scenario outlined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) just four years ago. And that means that the risk of extreme weather events has also risen. Since these extreme weather events disproportionately affect poorer countries in general and Africa in particular, the inability of the developed world – and that includes China and India who are now both major emitters – to reduce emissions has a direct effect on African lives and livelihoods.
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Tags: Cancun, Carbon emissions, China, Climate change, Copenhagen, cyclone, Drought, Floods, Global warming, India, IPCC, Kyoto Protocol, natural disasters, USA
admin October 17th, 2011
We’re going to be exhibiting at AidEx in Brussels this week – open days are Wednesday and Thursday – and participating in a roundtable organised by PA International. The roundtable will be discussing ‘The future of humanitarian aid and development assistance’, which is a large topic, but I’m sure we’ll give it a good go in the hour that we have available.
Details of the conference at AidEx are here. Entry to the show and the conference are free, so if you are in the area this week, do drop in, you’ll find Advance Aid on stand B49.
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Tags: AidEx, Belgium, Local manufacturing, Local procurement, natural disasters, Sub-Saharan Africa
admin October 11th, 2011
Two containers loaned by Advance Aid are being used in the Dadaab refugee camp as a logistics base. The containers provide instant secure storage and, being insulated, also remain relatively cool.
You can read the full story here.
And this is one of the containers in situ:
Instant secure storage at Dadaab
Tags: Agility, Dadaab, Drought, Kenya, natural disasters, Somalia, World Vision
admin September 21st, 2011
Two container loads of Advance Aid-supplied emergency kits – part of our partnership with World Vision and Agility – are seen leaving for Dadaab recently.
Leaving the Agility yard in Nairobi
Each forty foot container has 500 emergency kits inside, each kit will provide the basics for a family of five, so these two trucks are carrying supplies that will help 5,000 people in the Dadaab camp.
Each forty foot container holds 500 kits
Tags: Dadaab, Kenya, natural disasters, Refugees, Somalia, World Vision
admin September 16th, 2011
African-produced emergency kits sourced for World Vision by Advance Aid are now being distributed to the refugees flooding into the Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya.
Kits for distribution
Each kit is designed to provide the basics for a family of five and contains a tarpaulin for shelter, blankets, a family-size mosquito net, a kitchen set, a hygiene kit and one bucket for clean water and another for washing.
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Tags: Dadaab, emergency kits, Famine, Kenya, natural disasters, Refugees, Somalia, World Vision
admin June 16th, 2011
DFID yesterday produced its response to the Humanitarian Emergency Response Review (HERR), chaired by Lord Paddy Ashdown. You can read the press release and download the paper here.
Disappointingly, as far as Advance Aid is concerned, the words ‘pre-positioning’ do not appear at all in the 36 page response. Nor does the phrase ‘local procurement’. So whilst there will be a lot of changes in DFID’s approach to responding to disasters, pre-positioning and local procurement are not explicitly part of any new approach.
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Tags: Andrew Mitchell, DFID, HERR, Lord Paddy Ashdown, natural disasters
admin June 15th, 2011
It’s a big day today for Advance Aid as we launch our partnership in Nairobi with World Vision and Agility.
You can read the full press release here but what that does not say is that this is the culmination of many months’ work by everyone involved in this partnership. It also does not say that this is really only the beginning.
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Tags: Agility, Kenya, natural disasters, World Vision
admin May 6th, 2011
Two stories published today give different halves of the same picture. In Western Tanzania 3,500 people are made homeless by what are described as ‘devastating’ floods. Meanwhile from Bonn in Germany comes the news that none of the world’s rich countries have met a May 1st deadline for outlining how they will help developing countries combat climate change.
In fact, two countries did respond by the May 1st deadline set up at last year’s Cancun COP meeting – Russia and Ukraine. But they both wrote in to say that they did not feel obliged to contribute under the deal under which the rich countries would provide almost $30 billion in initial “fast-start” climate funds from 2010-12.
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Tags: Cancun, Climate change, Copenhagen, Floods, natural disasters, Plan International, Russia, Tanzania, Ukraine, UNFCCC
admin April 5th, 2011
For all that Andrew Mitchell’s new-style DFID has been promising to bring the private sector into the ministry, the recommendations in the recent Ashdown Committee report (HERR) on working more closely with the private sector in humanitarian situations are hugely disappointing. They neither strongly advocate increased private sector involvement, nor do they advocate the disciplining of the private sector when it underperforms – something that seems long overdue in the humanitarian space.
In fact there is just one recommendation, Recommendation 21, and it asks that DFID “ensure that the new Private Sector Department gives full consideration to those areas where private sector expertise can improve humanitarian response effectiveness, including at the country level”.
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Tags: Andrew Mitchell, DFID, HERR, Lord Paddy Ashdown, natural disasters
admin March 28th, 2011
Lord Paddy Ashdown has spoken, with the publication today of his Humanitarian Emergency Response Review (HERR) for DFID, and he has some interesting things to say. We have to welcome, in particular, the section on ‘Changing the funding model’, something that Advance Aid has been arguing for.
Within this section there is an acknowledgment that funding is not done well at the moment and he states that, “DFID…needs to use its funds to promote change – to ensure that agencies are equipped to respond fast and deliver what people really need.” He goes on to offer the following damning critique, “Funding is not proportionate to needs, it is not equitable, it is not coordinated or harmonised, it does not focus enough on prevention and it does not demand demonstrable performance of funded agencies.”
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Tags: CERF, DFID, Emergencies, HERR, Lord Paddy Ashdown, natural disasters, UN
