An Anthropological Perspective on the Timeline of Humanitarian Interventions
This chapter deals with the main temporal stages of humanitarian programmes and the interlinked contexts within which these stages unfold, proceeding from early identification of humanitarian risks to the linking with development execution of humanitarian
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This chapter deals with the main temporal stages of humanitarian programmes and the interlinked contexts within which these stages unfold, proceeding from early identification of humanitarian risks to the linking with development execution of humanitarian aid as a participative and empowering effort. In the multidisciplinary field of humanitarian assistance, anthropology plays a role at all stages, from the initial concerted efforts to identify possible or probable upcoming critical or disastrous situations to the implementation of steps and measures designed to attain sustainable development for the areas and populations affected. The temporal stages of humanitarian action are considered here from an anthropological perspective, i.e. early identification of risks, risk reduction and preparedness, rapid reaction in the face of emergency or disaster and, finally, linking humanitarian action to development when it comes to reconstruction efforts in disaster zones. The process is perhaps best characterised as a circle rather than a straight line.
1 Early Identification of Probable Future Hazards Processes that may eventually lead to humanitarian crises, including degradation or loss of habitat, increased levels of social conflicts and climate change, among others, should be identified as early as possible. In many cases throughout different regions, ranging from the Kalahari over the Sahel and Central America to the Amazon and others, the anthropologic insights into specific conditions obtained
J.C. Gumucio-Castellon (*) Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden e-mail: [email protected] © Springer International Publishing AG 2018 H.-J. Heintze, P. Thielbo¨rger (eds.), International Humanitarian Action, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-14454-2_18
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through ethnographic research can be of great value to humanitarians. For instance, the inhabitants of the Central African rainforest, already facing various challenges such as deforestation and poaching, may today be facing a severe reduction of rainfall: The Congolese forest, with its drier conditions and higher percentage of semi-evergreen trees, may be more tolerant to short-term rainfall reduction than are wetter tropical forests, but for a long-term drought there may be critical thresholds of water availability below which higher-biomass, closed-canopy forests transition to more open, lower-biomass forests.1
Those directly affected by such impending changes would be the various low-density rainforest groups in the area, collectively known as Pygmies, but well differentiated by anthropologists as the Mbuti, Aka, Baka and Twa. As in any other discipline, the context—academic, political and otherwise—in which this kind of ethnographic knowledge is obtained is highly contested, with various uncertainties and perils. The former may be illustrated by the work of Paul Farmer, professor of Anthropology at Harvard Medical School and Chair of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard in Haiti. Farmer’s well-documented early warnings of a catastrophe wa
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