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Civil-Military Coordination (CMCOORD): An Essential Coordination Service in the Climate Crisis?
29 Aug 2024

RSIS held a seminar titled “Humanitarian Civil-Military Coordination (CMCOORD): An Essential Coordination Service in the Climate Crisis?” on 29 August 2024. It was hosted by the Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HADR), Centre for Non-Traditional Security Studies (NTS Centre), RSIS. Moderated by Dr Alistair Cook, Senior Fellow and Coordinator of the HADR Programme, the seminar was delivered by Mr Ronaldo Reario, Lead for Natural, Environmental and Technological (NEaT) Emergencies, Civil-Military Coordination Service, UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

As disasters are becoming increasingly prevalent, organisations and militaries are also increasingly acknowledging the need for common situational awareness among all parties involved in disaster response operations. This is particularly important in cases of information-sharing, task-division, and coordination/planning, where the civil-military coordination plays a significant role. The utility of humanitarian civil-military coordination therefore lies in its ability to act as a bridge between the humanitarian, civil-government, and military actors necessary in building resilience as part of HADR operations and disaster risk management efforts.

Similarly, such an approach can also be used in climate change adaptation/mitigation measures. After all, climate change is an existential threat – one in which both the military and humanitarian/civil society organisations are also increasingly involved. Such an approach may be useful in areas such as collecting and sharing information of carbon footprints and how this can be improved through green emissions, as well as building joint climate literacy programmes for leaders.

The seminar concluded with a Q&A session. Questions from the attendees included how and why the principle of co-existence would apply to the relationship of the military and humanitarian organisations during disaster response operations, the potential problems that may arise when building resilience means going back to “normality”, as well as the relevance of CM-COORD in mitigating climate change in this region.

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