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quality specifications for which they were paid in Aceh, or the claim that reconstructed houses in Sri Lanka were allocated to government officials’ friends and family rather than to other victims who had greater need.9 It has been reported recently – although challenged by the aid agency – that in Somalia close to 50 per cent of the main food aid programme did not reach targeted beneficiaries, but was divided among local implementing partners, transporters and armed militias.10 The near-total breakdown of political, economic and social institutions in Somalia means that this particular case cannot be considered representative of all aid programmes, but it does illustrate an extreme example of the corrupt diversion of emergency aid. Existing disaster risk reduction plans
The humanitarian community has formulated various action plans to promote climate-related disaster preparedness and adaptation, such as the Hyogo Framework for Action 2005–2015.11 These focus mainly on technical risk reduction measures, however, such as improved infrastructure, land-use planning and better disaster prediction and early warning systems. Governance is addressed as regards improving disaster management and response coordination, or strengthening affected communities’ ability to anticipate and respond to disaster, but the impact of corruption has, to a large extent, not been considered. To date, insufficient thought seems to have been given to the expected costs of implementing these action plans, or to the expanded financial resources that will be required to address the human needs created by increased climate-related crises. One such rare analysis estimates that annual international spending on humanitarian aid could grow over the next 20 years (in nominal terms) by anything from 32 per cent (if only estimated increases in disaster frequency are included), to 134 per cent (if disaster frequency and intensity are included) to up to 1600 per cent (if past disaster trends are projected linearly).12 The increased resources required, combined with pressure from donors, the media and the general public on public and non-governmental aid organizations to scale up operations and disburse aid rapidly, could stress already overstretched systems and staff, and weaken vigilance and controls. The limitations posed by low absorptive capacity in many at-risk countries (as measured, for example, by government effectiveness in table 5.2) mean that, when aid is scaled up, existing systems may not be able to absorb large increases in resources without leading to more waste, leakage or corruption.13 In view of this massive potential growth in humanitarian resource flows, it is surprising that so little analysis has been done of the associated corruption risks.
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