This year’s Asia Public Policy Forum focused on the theme of disaster management—an issue of critical concern for an area highly vulnerable to a variety of natural hazards. With the aim of fostering discussion on core disaster management challenges and advances in Asia, it featured presentations on a variety of issues concerning disaster risk reduction, emergency preparedness and response, and disaster recovery.
The forum was jointly organized by the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policyat the National University of Singapore and the Rajawali Foundation Institute for Asia at Harvard Kennedy School’s Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation. Co-sponsors are the Program on Crisis Leadership at Harvard Kennedy School and the Harvard University Asia Center.
Lilianne Fan presented a panel on "Capacity Building and Disaster Preparedness in the Context of Asia-Pacific’s Humanitarian and Development Challenges"
This report is the result of a study examining whether cash transfer programmes would be appropriate, cost-effective and feasible and whether, as part of a Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) strategy, they could have positive impacts on people’s livelihoods that would reduce their risk to future disasters.
This paper provides a broad and selective overview of the humanitarian system, and trends and issues relating to humanitarian responses to natural disasters.