ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at the most European Union foreign policy relating to disaster management and humanitarian response in developing countries. It outlines the development of the European Union’s Directorate General for Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection (ECHO). ECHO is responsible for the European Commission’s provision of civil protection and overseas humanitarian aid. In terms of short-term humanitarian disaster management, ECHO acts in accordance with the European Consensus on Humanitarian Aid. The irony is that behind the rhetoric lie significant inconsistencies. ECHO’s own self-assessment explores the problems of coordinating aid from different member states. If resilience building and foreign policy strategy are not particularly effective on the ground, then perhaps something else explains why a particular approach is being promoted. The resilience turn represents a more ‘pragmatic’ approach that scales back intervention in favour of ‘best fit’ solutions. Resilience thinking explicitly rejects top-down legal solutions, which are seen as based on inappropriate linear and static understandings of social-ecological systems.
