Looking through an Environmental Lens: Implications and Opportunities for Cash Transfer Programming in Humanitarian Response
Publisher: UN Environment, London School of Economics, Shelter Cluster, and UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
Author(s): Karina Blanco Ochoa, Lauren Harrison, Nicholas Lyon, and Marissa Nordentoft
Date: 2018
Topics: Humanitarian Assistance, Programming
Countries: Indonesia, Philippines, Sri Lanka
In this report, the UN Environment/OCHA Joint Unit, working in partnership with the London School of Economics and Political Science and the Global Shelter Cluster, explores this question in light of the rise in cash-based assistance and the changing landscape of humanitarian modalities. Looking through an environmental lens, the expansion of cash-based responses introduces both new opportunities and additional complexity in the interaction between humanitarianism and the environment. Ultimately, this points to a critical gap in humanitarian practice – in budgets, evaluations, and the Humanitarian Programme Cycle (HPC) itself.
In theory, environmental issues figure prominently in today’s humanitarian and development consciousness, appearing as a cross-cutting priority in nascent policy agendas (Agenda for Humanity, 2016a). The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) picked up where the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) left off, acknowledging the importance of mainstreaming environmental considerations as a central precondition to improve development outcomes. During the 2016 World Humanitarian Summit (WHS), humanitarian leaders leveraged the SDGs as a key motivation for commitments to ‘manage risks and crises differently’ (Agenda for Humanity, 2016b) under Core Responsibility 4 of the ‘Agenda for Humanity’, the central policy output of the summit, with an ambition to transcend the ‘humanitarian-development divide’.