Acknowledgements Foreword Overview: Promoting Freedom, Security and Opportunity Chapter 1: Promoting Democratic Governance Chapter 2: Driving Economic Growth Chapter 3: Improving People's Health Chapter 4: Mitigating and Managing Conflict Chapter 5: Providing Humanitarian Aid Chapter 6: The Full Measure of Foreign Aid Tuesday, 07-Jan-2003 08:51:27 EST

Jump to Chapter 5 Sections:
>> Humanitarian aid in the 1990's >> New humanitarian actors >> Innovations, failures and the crisis in humanitarian aid >> Evolving practices and future changes >> Looking ahead >> Background paper >> References

As late as the mid-1980s, only a few-and not at all well-received-pessimists were discussing the potential for religious nationalism, ethnic conflict, and intrastate wars that would soon so profoundly affect the world. Still, we must look ahead as best we can. With that in mind, consider the following:

• In some areas, such as southern Africa, Central Asia, and countries around the Mediterranean Sea, lack of rainfall and higher temperatures are predicted to dramatically increase water stress, with concomitantly lower harvests. By 2010 an additional 50 million people will be at risk of hunger (box 5.1).



• Economic migrants will continue to swell urban ghettos, with many in poor housing lacking water and sanitation. Flood-induced cholera outbreaks in urban slums will become more common, requiring emergency responses.



• Population pressures will force more people to move onto marginal lands where human activity has already caused deforestation, water shortages, and desertification or into lowland areas more prone to floods or hurricanes.



• Health emergencies are expected to proliferate, further taxing public health systems. Mosquito-transmitted diseases such as malaria and dengue fever are expected to spread well beyond their current geographic limits.



• Infectious diseases such as AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria, already health emergencies, are significantly deepening the impacts of conflicts and natural disasters. HIV/AIDS among drought-affected populations, for example, is making many people more susceptible to health problems associated with food shortages (and other infectious diseases). Related illnesses (and death) deeply affect food security and will render many families less able to recover from conflicts and natural disasters.



• Technological accidents and disasters are projected to increase in number and severity because of spreading industrialization, aging plants and technologies, declining resources for safety and monitoring, and increasing vulnerability caused by ill-informed development decisions and nondecisions. The consequences of such accidents will not be border sensitive-entire regions could be affected.



• Domino effects are also possible, where a natural disaster triggers a technological accident in an urban area, creating unforeseen and uncontrolled population movements and generating conditions for conflict.



• Challenges remain in meeting the needs of today’s war-affected populations. While expert opinions vary on whether new internal conflicts will emerge, ongoing ones are increasingly intractable and lethal with growing numbers of civilian casualties and increasingly global consequences.



• Potential chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and explosive disasters loom large in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, with unknown implications for humanitarian aid.