5 minute read
Hand in hand: Addressing increased and evolving humanitarian need
REDR AUSTRALIA IS LOOKING TO ITS CONSULTING ENGINEERING ROOTS TO ENSURE SUSTAINABLE AND LASTING IMPACT FOR COMMUNITIES GLOBALLY.
When GHD civil engineer Camilla arrived in Bangladesh in 2018, the fast approaching dry season meant the Rohingya population living in Cox’s Bazar were facing five months of limited water supply.
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Deployed through humanitarian response agency RedR Australia as a Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Expert to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Camilla’s work focused on potential water sources and storage locations – including the design of a reservoir to service the refugees in Teknaf, the southern district of Cox’s Bazar.
Camilla’s deployment formed part of RedR Australia’s ongoing support to the Rohingya crisis, with the world’s largest and most densely populated refugee camp near Cox’s Bazar now home to around 850,000 people who fled systemic genocide, rape and torture in northern Myanmar in late 2017.
Since 2017, through Australia Assists – the Australian Government’s humanitarian civilian deployment program implemented by RedR Australia – more than 70 technical specialists have deployed to United Nations agencies in Bangladesh to support the response to the refugee crisis – representing RedR Australia’s largest single response to a humanitarian emergency in almost thirty years of operation.
RedR Australia roster members continue to work on the ground in Cox’s Bazar today. With Camilla’s work helping to provide up to 20,000 people with 20 litres of water per person per day, her deployment is just one example of the impact that engineers are having in humanitarian response around the world.
RedR Australia and the consulting engineering sector have a long history of collaboration both in Australia and abroad. Originally known as Registered Engineers for Disaster Relief, RedR Australia was established in 1992 by engineer Jeff Dobel, who called on his peers to apply their skills to disaster relief. Consult Australia and Engineers Australia are founding bodies, supporting RedR Australia to this day.
From our work helping communities to prepare for, respond to and recover from emergencies, we know that engineering is key to humanitarian action.
We know the resilience communities derive from their infrastructure and how it keeps them physically and socially connected to support, trade and livelihoods. Infrastructure also enables people to keep in touch with loved ones, and access lifesaving and essential supplies and services before, during and after a disaster.
The main water reservoir servicing Teknaf camp in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh.
The work of engineers remains at the core of quality humanitarian response. Simply put, when engineering and humanitarianism meet, lives are saved and communities can build resilience for the next generation.
As we look to the future of our sector and the rapidly increasing humanitarian need, RedR Australia envisions a world where communities can continue to rely on their infrastructure to keep them safe.
Our newly established Humanitarian Alliance has been created in partnership with some of Consult Australia’s member firms to allow us to maintain and build on our humanitarian impact through working together in a more concerted way.
Fighting climate change and achieving the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals is the challenge of our decade – but together, we can transform disaster prevention, preparedness and resilience.
Through the Alliance, we offer training on humanitarian principles for professional services consultants so that more experts like Camilla can build capacity in communities and make cities and settlements more safe, inclusive, robust and sustainable.
This includes our upcoming Corporate Humanitarian Challenge, a oneday team building and professional development opportunity providing insights into the challenges faced by humanitarians and affected communities when responding to crises. Put Friday 24 June in your diaries – it’s a must for those wanting a taster of the sector.
The Alliance will not only benefit humanitarian response, but assist firms to improve staff engagement, retention and leadership opportunities, with short-term deployments allowing the opportunity to build human capital, currency and networks.
The Alliance will also help the sector to meet its environmental and social governance aspirations, allowing firms to demonstrate and measure their responsibility and sustainability impact.
At RedR Australia, our people are already working side by side with and for communities dealing with the impacts of the climate crisis and conflict.
By working together on safer communities projects, the Alliance will help more professionals and sectors to understand and influence in real terms what safer social and physical infrastructure looks like.
The world is at a crossroad. To address the current and anticipated challenges facing individuals, families, communities and countries, we must all become much more responsible and accountable. Only this will ensure the world we leave behind is at least as good as the one we have enjoyed.
Camilla will join RedR Australia CEO Kirsten Sayers at the upcoming Consult Australia OneConsult conference. The pair will present on Thursday 31 March 2022 on humanitarian impact and environmental and social governance factors – sharing learnings from the field on designing physical and social infrastructure for the world’s most vulnerable populations.
