A Skein of Thought. Группа авторов

most importantly, I believe, it identifies that there has to be a broader and a more people-centred preventive approach to disaster risk. Disaster risk reduction practices need to be multi-hazard and multi-sectoral, inclusive and accessible in order to be efficient and effective.

      At the same time, the humanitarian community must continue to explore new tools and innovations that allow it to act early, such as anticipatory financing, cash transfer programming, and disaster risk insurance. We know that early interventions can greatly lessen the impact of climate related shocks—we need to become better at identifying opportunities to intervene before a looming risk transforms into a full blown humanitarian catastrophe. These initiatives should be seen as part of a much broader risk management approach that includes humanitarian, development, security, and climate actors.

      The three pillars I have outlined point to the need for an integrated approach, which puts the individual right at the centre of all our actions—not as a subject but as an active participant in their own destiny. This is very much the approach set out in Ireland’s new international development policy A Better World, in which reducing humanitarian needs sits alongside gender equality, strengthening governance, and climate action as Ireland’s policy priorities. These are issues and above that actually, an approach that I expect Ireland to highlight in its campaign for the Security Council in 2021—2022. It’s also why I am very supportive of that campaign.

      If we all fail to act now; if we fail to act decisively; if we fail to act together, future generations will never forgive us for the world that we bequeath them.

      I think a lot about that world. I have six grandchildren; the eldest is fifteen. They will be in their twenties, and their thirties and forties in 2050. They will share the world with nine billion people, and I think a lot about that world and what they will think of us if we do not use the window that we have.

      I want to recall the haunting words of Hindou Ibrahim to the Security Council last July:

       “For me, as one who comes from these communities, I see babies and young people growing up in this area and think about them in the next decade or the next twenty years. What will their futures be like? Are they also going to jump in the sea? Are they going to join terrorist groups? Or are they going to kill each other because, in order to survive, they have to eat?”

      I want to end with the words of the first Chair of The Elders, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who, when asked if he was an optimist, answered, “No, but I’m a prisoner of hope.” Because it is hope we need to give us the energy to go forward resolutely and to accept the challenge of this window of time that we have to transform to a world that will be safe for our children and grandchildren.

      —United Nations, April 2019