Governance of the world food system and crisis prevention

The present study offers a framework, rooted in Disaster Studies. The next few sections will first discuss the analytical tool box, which we have largely drawn from Disaster Studies. Thereafter the food regime will be looked into in the quantitative (food security, Section 3.1) and qualitative sense (food safety, Section 3.2), and the actors and rules and regulations for international food aid discussed. It will become clear that the private sector has a key role to play in both categories. Chapter 4 calls attention to the increasing complexities and uncertainties in the global food system that complicate food governance. To get anything done at all, a simplification seems necessary, such as declaring a food problem a safety issue

Climate Change Adaptation Through Humanitarian Aid? Promises, Perils and Potentials of the ‘New Humanitarianism’

A major reform of the humanitarian sector is currently under way, focusing increasingly on the prevention of crises rather than on providing relief once crises have occurred. This article examines whether and how this new humanitarian approach can also improve people’s ability to adapt to climate change. We identify three approaches central to this ‘new humanitarianism’, namely resilience, disaster risk reduction and early warning systems, and discuss them in relation to broad principles for adaptation to climate change. We find that, despite encouraging potential and a lot of common ground, key barriers and hindrances still exist, such as inertia of organisational cultures and existing financial models. We suggest that realising this potential will require acknowledging and addressing the multitude of local social, historical and political inequities that drive both humanitarian crises and vulnerability to climate change