The Triple Mandate of Development, Climate, and Humanitarian Aid

Abstract

The global aid system faces a structural crisis as shrinking donor commitments collide with rising humanitarian needs and intensifying climate pressures. Official development assistance is increasingly stretched across three overlapping mandates – crisis response, development, and climate action – creating tensions that risk undermining long-term development outcomes. This paper introduces an analytical framework for understanding these trade-offs, situating aid along two dimensions: time horizon (short-term vs. long-term) and scope of impact (local vs. global). Mapping recent aid flows against this typology reveals both complementarities, such as between development and climate adaptation, and sharp divergences, particularly in the cases of climate mitigation and crisis response. We argue that more effective aid management requires a strategic mix of selective integration, where mandates align, and purposeful disentanglement, where they diverge.

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