LONDON (AlertNet) - 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, according to the head of the London-based Humanitarian Futures Programme.
Randolph Kent, a former U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Somalia, Kosovo and Rwanda, said the notion of a hapless South and a resilient North was outdated in a world that was becoming ever more vulnerable to new types of complex and simultaneous hazards.
Kristalina Georgieva European Commissioner for International Cooperation, Humanitarian Aid and Crisis response
Ladies and gentlemen
I know from personal experience that the insurance and reinsurance industries are increasingly active in the area of managing the risks from natural disasters:
Munich Re with its NatCatService provides some of the very best research and analysis of natural disasters.
My previous employer, the World Bank, has teamed up with the insurance industry to develop a range of innovative products:
The Bank has piloted “rainfall index insurance” projects in Malawi,
DHAKA,, 7 October 2011 (IRIN) - Bangladesh’s high-growth mobile phone sector is buying into disaster risk reduction, and the cyclone-affected costal region stands to gain most, say government officials, aid workers and private sector sources.
By the beginning of 2012, the Disaster Management Bureau (DMB) will team up with the country’s largest mobile phone provider Grameenphone, and state-run mobile phone company Teletalk, to provide early warnings for cyclones and floods to all 14 coastal districts.
“We identified mobile phones as an effective medium for disaster risk reduction in Bangladesh
