The Humanitarian Reset: Challenges and Opportunities for Environmental Peacebuilding

Charles Kelly, Independent (United States)

The Humanitarian Reset is a response to the significant reduction in humanitarian funding, with links to the humanitarian sector Grand Bargan. The Reset focuses on transitioning UN-led international post crisis operations and coordination to a different coordination and operations system as quickly as possible, with increased involvement of non-international actors in line with the Grand Bargan. This rapid transition to as yet undefined coordinating and assistance systems presents a challenge for environmental peacebuilding, an incremental, and often slow, process, best started early in a response. The paper will review the impacts of the Reset on environmental peacebuilding efforts, including how increased involvement of non-international actors could affect peacebuilding efforts. The paper will identify opportunities to leverage environmental peacebuilding as a mechanism to facilitate the transition from the UN-led system to longer term coordination and operations systems with greater attention to the environment and addressing the needs of the crisis-affected.