Climate Change: A New Challenge for Upgrading Humanitarian Ethics?
In the book, Humanitarianism 2.0: New Ethics for the Climate Emergency, the international expert of humanitarian ethics, Mr. Hugo Slim, suggests that if humanitarian organisations are able to meet challenges resulted from climate change negative impacts it is crucial to upgrade humanitarian ethics from decision making overwhelmingly dominated by human needs, or Anthropocene, to a new paradigm, which emphasises both human needs and ecological needs. The author articulates the new ethics framework by discussing the essential ethic principles individually and proposing some specific revisions on the textual expression of the key principles. Let us see how the arguments are illustrated in the 12 chapters of the book.
By summarising the history of humanitarianism development from 1960s to 2020s, in chapter 1 the author suggests that the framework of humanitarian work develops towards a more social just and environmental sustainability-oriented direction. The mainline is shown from the Declaration of Red Cross Principles in 1965, to the Code of Conduct for Disaster Relief in 1994, and to the Climate and Environment Charter for Humanitarian Organizations in 2021. Why could this take place? Mr. Slim explains in chapter 2 and 3 what is going on regarding climate change and the impacts of climate-related extreme weather events, from floods, droughts to extreme heatwaves. The author thinks that climate change impacts have become daily realities of human life. It is pivotal for policy makers to think about how to upgrade the humanitarian ethic framework when climate change is the daily backdrop.
The main discussion of the book is laid out through chapter 4 to 11. The author attempts to upgrade the existing key humanitarian ethics, one principle after another, according to grave impacts of climate change. In chapter 4, the Disaster Risk Reduction model, “pressure and release” model, is presented to illustrate the mainstreaming reasoning and operational framework of humanitarian work. The model shows that disaster risk is positively related to seriousness of hazards, scale of exposure, and human and community vulnerability, and negatively related to human and social capacity to deal with hazards. When climate hazards are put into the matrix, the model still makes sense in reducing the hazard risks by improving human capacities and resilience although scale of hazards and exposure could be unprecedented.
By elevating the importance of nature equal with of humanity within the whole Earth eco-system, in chapter 5 and 6 the author suggests a mutualism between humanity and nature. Nevertheless, the author recognises that in humanitarian practices, the principle of humanity may still hold higher priority than the principle of nature needs. Apart from humanity, impartiality is the other most important principle in humanitarian ethics. How to update this principle under climate change impacts is another big issue. This is what the author discusses in chapter 7. Tackling climate change under limited resources is difficult because the impacts of climate change are distributed unevenly among nations, between social economic groups, and across generations. For humanitarian work, it is more complicated to alleviate disaster risks or reduce human sufferings when climate hazards present unprecedented risks in scale and in the long term.
The study of climate change involves scientific research on estimating how much the temperature may rise in the decades to come and examining how serious the impacts could look like. In chapter 8, the author proposes a new ethical principle, anticipation, which provides a pathway to take future needs of human and nature into consideration and formulation of the present priorities of humanitarian actions.
Climate change is a long and ongoing process. For some nations and communities, adaptation is a more urgent mission than mitigation in terms of reducing the risk of climate hazards. For an enhanced ethical framework of humanitarian aid, the author recommends in chapter 9, 10 and 11 that humanitarian ethical framework shall put adaptation at the essential place by prioritising the support to those experience loss the most and by helping climate vulnerable communities understand why mobility is significant to renew livelihood. In a word, adaptation as an ethic principle is to support those most climate-vulnerable populations and communities to rebuild their lives and sustain their livelihoods.
Finally, in chapter 12 the author concludes that new version of humanitarian ethics and principles, humanitarianism 2.0, which presents a new moral paradigm by “taking much greater account of nature and the future”, is necessary and urgent to prepare humanitarian work for the challenges of future.
What the author recommends on the new elements of humanitarian ethics is based on the two ethical principles. First, apart from human life, the life of nature shall be valued more than before, if not as equal as humanity; Second, the interests of future generations shall be taken into account and clearly illustrated in the construction of a new ethical framework. These two key principles are inspired by the discussion on climate justice. As we see in the debates on climate justice and its application in climate policy, it is extremely challenging to translate the two principles into practical policy guides. First, both nature and future generations lack agency to participate in political and policy deliberation. Second, there has not been an effective way to delegate the agency of nature and future generations to any types of contemporary agents like what happens in a political representation scheme in a modern democratic system. Apart from lack of agency, another big issue is the inevitability of trade-offs. As we live in the boundaries of resources and time, we often encounter a dilemma, choosing only one of two equally desirable ends. As Mr. Slim acknowledges in chapter 5 that as the most important principle humanity may still hold higher priority than needs of nature in humanitarian practices.
Mr. Slim assumes that climate emergency is the premise for upgrading humanitarian ethical principles. However, in the book, there is no discussion on the counterarguments of climate emergency. Particularly, to what extent the extreme weather such as floods, droughts, and heatwaves, events are largely attributed to the impacts of climate change. For instance, Mr. Slim suggests that the Yangzi floods of 1931 were probably the biggest single climate-related disaster of the 20th century. This is provocative. Mr. Slim describes the disastrous social, economic and health impacts of the floods based on The Nature of Disaster in China: The 1931 Yangzi River Flood, a historical description by Chris Courtney. But Mr. Slim does not provide any evidence to prove the link between the unprecedented floods and climate change. A new study published in Journal of Climate in 2023 suggests that the 1931 floods in China resulted from extreme meteorological and oceanographic conditions and forces (see note). Researchers need to find more convincing evidence to argue that there was meaningful causality between climate change, especially what it is understood in contemporary sense, and the historical 1931 floods in China. (Footnote)
As the study of climate change is a long and complex process, we must admit what we do not know is far more than what we have known about climate change. It is another painful challenge about how to translate our understanding of climate change into daily actions and policies of tackling the problem. The irreversibility and cascading of climate change might add urgency to the discussion, but we still need to scrutinise the features and debate about them. Meantime, a long-term strategy, which embraces humility, uncertainties, and room for readjustment, may be worthy of thinking rather than pushing rapid policy shifts with overestimated concern about the emergency of climate change.
As Mr. Slim mentions in the book, the development of ethical principles in humanitarian aid has a dynamic history of seven decades. The milestones of ethics upgrading or enhancement mirror the tremendous changes of era. In the 1960s, not long after the second world war and the start of the Cold War, the foundational principles of humanitarian aids ethics, from humanity, impartiality, to neutrality and independence, reflect the down-to-earth ambitions of international communities when hunger, war and natural disasters were immediate risks for most parts of the world. In the 1990s, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War made possible a new round of global democratic movement. This historical change gained momentum in many places and nurtured humanitarian ethics to integrate public participation and community empowerment into the framework. From the mid 1990s to late 2010s, global political stabilisation and accelerated economic globalisation allow environmental sustainability and climate change to take stage to formulate the global agendas. During those decades, the Kyoto Protocol in 1997 and the Paris Climate Agreement in 2015 demonstrate the international community’s determination and ambition to cope with climate change. Under this context, one can see the trend why in revising humanitarian ethics, human-centric discourse is downplayed and moving up the stakes of nature needs and future generations gains support. However, global climate ambitions have not turned into the productive achievements of carbon emissions reduction. The target of cutting global carbon emissions by half by 2030 compared to the levels of 1990 is becoming out of reach based on the current emission projection. Looking into the next two decades, national interests, such as immigration, energy security, domestic economic growth, will be prioritised again rather than those global issues, like climate change and economic and trade globalisation. One can see the sea change from American politics turning right and continued strategic competition between China and the United States since 2018, when the trade war between the two biggest economies started. Policy makers and all the stakeholders in the humanitarian aid communities across the world might rethink how the ethical principles and framework could be revised to meet new challenges while the global geo-strategic shift has been forming.
Humanitarianism 2.0: New Ethics for the Climate Emergency. By Hugo Slim. Published by Hurst and Company in 2026
Note:
Yueqi Zhou., et al. 2023. Understanding the Forcing Mechanisms of the 1931 Summer Flood Along the Yangtze River, the World’s Deadliest Flood on Record. Accessible at https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/clim/36/18/JCLI-D-22-0771.1.xml
