2.2. Statement by Dr D. Guha-Sapir (Université Catholique de Louvain - Brussels)

Donor agencies increasingly recognise the importance of socio-economic and environmental issues in the context of promoting development through relief. With this expert consultation, the European Commission wishes to bring together a small group of experts in technical and socio-economic issues capable of discussing and laying the ground level issues related to the linkages between population displacement, the environment and relief. The purpose of the consultation is to furnish ECHO with policy directions for environmental management in humanitarian aid programmes.

While initially the aim was to develop operational guidelines for field work, following discussions with executing agencies, it was later felt that the policy climate has to be clarified before operational guidelines be developed. Establishing clear priority policy direction for an emergency operations is therefore the first objective of our gathering here.