Humanitarian shelter and climate change: Is the shelter sector ready?
12 May 2022, 6:00 pm–8:00 pm
In this Humanitarian Institute Evening Conference, we ask whether humanitarian organisations are ready to be part of the solution to the climate crisis and how they can balance minimising environmental impact with timely and principled humanitarian assistance.
This event is free.
Event Information
Open to
- All
Availability
- Yes
Cost
- Free
Organiser
-
Victoria Maynard – UCL Institute for Risk and Disaster Reduction
Location
-
Roberts Building 106Torrington PlaceLondonWC1E 7JEUnited Kingdom
In 2021 the Red Cross Red Crescent Movement launched the Climate and Environment Charter for Humanitarian Organisations. The Charter calls for humanitarian organisations to be “part of the solution” to the climate crisis – through meeting growing humanitarian needs and helping people adapt to a changing climate, while minimising their own environmental impact. Since its launch in May 2021 the Climate Charter has been signed by more than 200 organisations – including several members of the Strategic Advisory Group of the Global Shelter Cluster.
But is the shelter sector ready to be part of the solution? Do we have the capacity to respond to rising humanitarian needs while reducing vulnerability to longer-term shocks and stresses? Do we have the skills to understand and incorporate risk analyses into our programmes, alongside local and indigenous knowledge? How can we minimise the damage we cause to the environment while providing timely and principled humanitarian assistance?
In partnership with the Norwegian Refugee Council, the UCL IRDR welcomes humanitarian shelter practitioners, policy-makers, academics, students, staff, and members of the public to debate this critically important topic.
The conference will be followed by a reception in the Roberts Building Foyer and will be livestreamed on the IRDR YouTube channel.
Confirmed speakers
- Lisa Guppy, Chair
- Lisa Guppy is a Lecturer in Global Humanitarian Studies at University College London’s Institute for Risk and Disaster Reduction. She has a particular interest in protracted crises and the relationship between environmental management, peacebuilding, and resilience in fragile humanitarian contexts. Lisa has more than 16 years of experience working for UN agencies in disaster risk reduction and response – with her most recent post focusing on the environmental and climatic dimensions of disasters, displacement and insecurity in the Asia Pacific Region. Lisa has a Masters in Disaster Management and Sustainable Development, and a PhD in managing chronic crises in developing countries.
- Aditya Bahadur
- Aditya Bahadur is a Principal Researcher in the Human Settlements Group at the International Institute for Environment and Development. He has 15 years of experience in research, evaluation and practice of sustainable urban development, DRR and climate change. He has an MA and a PhD in Development Studies from the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, UK. He completed his Postdoctoral Research at the Earth Institute, Columbia University, New York where he wrote ‘Resilience Reset: Creating Resilient Cities in the Global South’ (Routledge 2021). He is a contributing author to the IPCC WGII Sixth Assessment Report.
- Magnus Wolfe Murray
- Magnus Wolfe Murray is an independent humanitarian specialist, working in shelter, infrastructure, WASH, health and other sectors since 1990. Always field based, his work has taken him through conflict and natural disaster responses across 5 continents, working in both immediate humanitarian emergency mode through recovery and reconstruction phases. He has worked across NGOs, UN and UK Government (DFID / FCDO) and a spell as an eco-builder (with his family on their own house construction in Portugal). He is currently working as FCDO's Humanitarian Advisor in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh.
- Kate Crawford
- Kate Crawford (katzn.org @katzncrawf) is a Senior Teaching Fellow/Makerspace Technician at The Engineering and Design Institute (TEDI-London). Her interest is in scaling up the repair of damaged/old housing. After failing at UCL to solve – or even to articulate better – the post-earthquake repair problem (and how to divert money into this hard-to-underwrite type of engineering) she spent six years working for a start-up developing IoT technology to measure the thermal performance of homes in order to under-write the scale up of energy retrofit instead. The start-up morphed into Knauf Energy Solutions and hundreds of houses got happily retrofitted along the way. The climate emergency pushed Kate back towards the education of engineers because part of adaption will be decolonising the ways we are taught to think, represent information and conduct ourselves.
- Amelia Rule
- Amelia Rule is Global Lead for Shelter and Settlements at the Norwegian Refugee Council. She trained as an architect and has been working in humanitarian response since 2009 for organisations such as the UK Government’s Department for International Development (DfID), the British Red Cross and CARE International. Building on her built environment background Amelia’s work has focussed on urban crises, displaced populations, and building community resilience through participatory programming. Amelia is particularly interested in the inclusion of women in humanitarian programming, as well as the impact humanitarian shelter interventions can have on self-reliance and durable solutions.