Every human action has a carbon footprint
Everything we do has implications for greenhouse gas emissions, from individuals eating breakfast and commuting to work each day, to large undertakings such as managing a country’s energy supply network. The carbon footprint of emergency operations comes mostly from fuel used for transporting supplies and staff to emergencies, by road, ship or airplane, which can account for more than 90 percent of emissions from a humanitarian operation. Even the fuel for transport has associated indirect emissions from its extraction, processing and transportation, as well as the materials and processes involved in the manufacturing of cars, trucks, ships and aircraft. How can we limit this footprint? Can preparedness help reduce the footprint of humanitarian operations?
Better humanitarian coordination leads to reduced emissions
Improved co-ordination among humanitarian agencies helps to reduce the carbon intensity of their emergency responses, such as through centralised global fleet management systems and the strategic location of stockpiling relief items. More cohesive logistics and communication systems save time and effort, reducing distances to deliver goods and avoiding excessive trips through better coordination. More efficient humanitarian response also reduces greenhouse gas emissions. Several preparedness actions that make up this project benefit from streamlined logistics and communications, which would have been impossible without the prior existence of humanitarian hubs in strategic locations.
Phase 1 of the project
The first phase of the project documented the gains obtained from preparedness activities in terms of time and cost savings. Several of these activities would also lead to considerable fuel savings. For example, the rehabilitation of the Tissi airstrip in Chad allowed the delivery of food by fixed-winged aircraft rather than by helicopter, in an area that is totally inaccessible by road during the rainy season. Likewise, the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV)/drones for post-disaster aerial surveys in Madagascar was shown to be beneficial in reducing the need for helicopter and fixed-wing flights.
Several types of training (emergency preparedness and operations, rapid assessments and response, ICT emergency management) were undertaken to enhance national staff capacity, reducing the need to fly international staff to the field. In addition, more effective coordination of information would allow for better identification and communication of precise locations where relief is needed, thus avoiding additional trips to locate them.
Phase 1 also documented the prepositioning of supplies by sea transport instead of emergency airlift, considering that timing is less critical in prepositioning than during emergencies. Such shifts in transport modality can considerably lower the emission profile of an activity due to the substantially lower emissions in shipping compared to aircraft.
Phase 2 of the project
Activities in phase II of the project all have implications for GHG emissions.
The routing of relief items, supplies, support and protection equipment for prepositioning can be done by choosing locations that can serve several emergencies at once, hence reducing the number of trips required and the amount of transport fuel consumed. Prepositioning anthropometric equipment, used to make body measurements and assess the nutritional status of individuals, helps to better target the needs of people at the onset of emergencies, thus optimising the quantities of food transported. Prepositioned prefabricated facilities can host staff during the early phase of an emergency and help avoid daily commutes to and from distant field offices.
Several activities aim to strengthen internal capacity and systems to improve resilience. Community based early warning systems can lessen the severity of an emergency’s impact and, as a result, reduce the quantity of humanitarian assistance needed and related transport emissions.
Similarly, building up our own local staff capacity, as well as that of government and partners, will strengthen local response and therefore reduce the number of external aid workers flying in from distant locations following a disaster.
Remaining challenges/limits to how much preparedness can reduce emissions
The priority for preparedness is to save lives, often by getting supplies where needed at the right time; therefore there are limits to how much emissions saving can be expected. Even for prepositioning, some relief items still need to be procured from distant locations. In addition, certain supplies like vaccines for instance are unsuitable for prepositioning since they require special cold-chain handling and storage.
Because preparedness is intrinsic to the entire humanitarian programme cycle, humanitarian players need to integrate environmental considerations at every step for the sake of the communities they aim to serve as well as to take part in global efforts to address carbon emission concerns. Natural resource and environmental issues have never been as critical for humanitarian actors to integrate given the range and scale of emergencies taking place in an increasingly depleted environmental landscape. Failing to take environmental issues into consideration, donors and aid agencies undermine their purpose: to save lives, preserve and restore human livelihoods making communities more resilient.
Better preparedness is only one way to reduce carbon emissions in humanitarian action. Other initiatives need to be taken to far greater scale which directly address energy efficiency in agency operations, buildings and transport fleets, to implementing renewable energy systems in refugee settings.