The humanitarian context is rapidly changing but the humanitarian ecosystem is plagued by what we call the knowledge-doing gap. We see it coming but apparently we are incapable to act. It just seems too hard to change our ways.
Who Do We Think We’re Fooling?
Everyone agrees the humanitarian case load is increasing rapidly while funds are drying up. A child can tell that this means we are driving ourselves into a wall. Our world is critically inter- dependent and highly non-linear, but we keep acting as if action-outcome links are simple and linear. We believe we shall be able to fix things when they arise. Well, we won’t. We shall increasingly be victims of complex feed-forward and feedback loops in dynamic systems, i.e. we shall always run behind the facts if we do not accept this simple reality and start acting accordingly. For instance, food prices will again increase dramatically because of the drought in Europe. This will put even more people in a life-threatening situation in completely different parts of the world.
These waves of crises will persist. They will even intensify and their effects will be more abrupt and unexpected. We need a dynamic and integrated approach to risk and scenario analysis in order to anticipate major disequilibria and to adequately prepare for timely response.
Who Do We Think We’re Fooling?
Everyone agrees the humanitarian case load is increasing rapidly while funds are drying up. A child can tell that this means we are driving ourselves into a wall. Our world is critically inter- dependent and highly non-linear, but we keep acting as if action-outcome links are simple and linear. We believe we shall be able to fix things when they arise. Well, we won’t. We shall increasingly be victims of complex feed-forward and feedback loops in dynamic systems, i.e. we shall always run behind the facts if we do not accept this simple reality and start acting accordingly. For instance, food prices will again increase dramatically because of the drought in Europe. This will put even more people in a life-threatening situation in completely different parts of the world.
These waves of crises will persist. They will even intensify and their effects will be more abrupt and unexpected. We need a dynamic and integrated approach to risk and scenario analysis in order to anticipate major disequilibria and to adequately prepare for timely response.
To read the rest of the article, please go to: http://www.insead.edu/facultyresearch/centres/isic/humanitarian/BetterChangeOurAct.cfm
To go to the Humanitarian Research Group website, please click here: http://www.insead.edu/facultyresearch/centres/isic/humanitarian
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