trailer world issue One 2010

Issue One 2010 11 Title brought from strategically positioned ware- houses to the scene of the crisis in just a few hours. “The next few years will see further devel- opment in cooperation between the private and the humanitarian logistics sector”, pre- dicts Belgian Professor Luk Van Wassenhove. For years, the co-author of the book “Hu- manitarian Logistics” has been investigating how to organise this kind of public private partnership along the best possible lines for both sides. He estimates that around eighty percent of the costs for international humani- tarian aid missions are generated by logistics. 65 percent is spent on stockpiling and provi- sioning in strategically positioned permanent aid warehouses, while 15 percent is incurred by transport and storage costs. Compared to the daily costs of humani- tarian logistics, the sponsoring activities of private companies are merely a drop in the ocean. On the other hand, they offer potential in the form of their expertise in setting up more efficient systems and supply chain man- agement structures, which can save money as well as lives. After all, the UN is chronically underfunded and has to rely on uncertain donation commitments from the individual countries. TNT helped the World Food Programme to set up a more efficient warehouse system, providing advice in terms of IT systems, stocktaking and fleet management. In future, the WFP wants to work on the basis of large- scale cooperation activities of this kind. It is also considering outsourcing whole business areas such as fleet management. However, Professor Van Wassenhove warns aid organi- sations not to place their logistics structures completely in private hands, as the objectives of private companies are simply quite differ- ent from aid organisations: earning money versus saving lives. But these frontiers become fuzzy at least for many employees of private companies who volunteer to take part in emergency re- lief. Only a few weeks after DHL relief work- er Chris Weeks came back from Haiti, he had to fly out to Chile. Here the earthquake had made hundreds of thousands of people homeless; his task was to ascertain whether DHL should send one of its Disaster Re- sponse Teams out to help. Before checking in for his flight at Brussels airport, Weeks gave an interview on the phone and said: “When things start to get emotional, when there are lots of media reports, that‘s when I begin to worry”, adding: ““Emergency aid often be- gins very quickly, and we really have to get a move on.” (lyr) Earning money vs. saving lives The World Food Programme coordinates the logistics network of the United Nations and is one of the largest employers in crisis logistics Photos:Kühne+Nagel,picturealliance,TNT(movingtheworld.org)

trailer world issue One 2010

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