In 1972, as global markets collapsed and the world fell into recession, humanitarian budgets fell by 15 percent. In the early nineties, as the world teetered on the brink of economic breakdown, aid fell into a five-year decline that saw 25 percent of development and emergency spending slashed across the board.
In November 2008, as the world slips further and further into an economic crisis of seemingly historic proportions, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies is appealing to governments for more than $400 million.
We know that Western governments have already started revising their humanitarian budgets. In October, the now United States vice-president elect, Senator Joe Biden, warned that his party's promise to double aid-budgets would "have to slow down."
And already, some international organisations have started to talk about reducing their own budgets. Again in October, the NGO Oxfam went on record contemplating budget cuts of between 10 and 15 percent for 2009. United Nations humanitarian agencies have also voiced concerns about budget ramifications.
Of course, challenging times such as these demand pragmatism from both politicians and humanitarians. The pot isn't as big as it was this time last year, and it will likely take some time to re-fill.
But it is this same pragmatism that justifies continued support for development.
The simple truth is that any reduction to aid budgets – even reductions based on solid domestic concerns – would be short-sighted from both a humanitarian and financial perspective.
Any reduction in assistance to African communities will have devastating consequences for millions of people – people who contributed the least to the woes of Wall Street and London City.
In Africa, communities are facing rapidly rising humanitarian challenges. Climate change – another Western-born woe – is contributing to a marked increase in the frequency, severity and unpredictability of disasters such as storms, floods and droughts. We are also witnessing a re-emergence of previously 'forgotten' diseases, such as tuberculosis. And the ravaging effects of HIV and AIDS, malaria and cholera remain unacceptably unchecked.
Development aims to build the strength of communities, neighbourhoods and townships to withstand these pressures and to ultimately thrive in their wake.
For example, community-level efforts to reduce the impact of floods and storms on villages in Mozambique have resulted in a dramatic lowering of deaths and injuries. But this success is the result of years of quiet and diligent work to establish early warning systems and foster community awareness and participation.
From a financial point of view, effective development work reduces the need for expensive emergency interventions. If communities have the knowledge, skills and support that they need to prepare themselves for the challenges they know are coming, then organisations won't need to launch international relief appeals to mop up the damage.
A concern is that, unless funding for community-based development is continued, we will face an increase in the need for costly emergency operations. To put it simply: money not spent now will be much more money that will need to be spent in the future.
Without such a commitment, we risk re-entering and reinforcing a continuous cycle of emergency-response-emergency-response. Such an approach is expensive, inefficient and, above all, fails to reduce the chronic needs of African communities.
But the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies' call goes beyond mere maintenance of current funding levels.
Even before this current downturn, aid budgets were woefully off the mark. According to the UN, despite pledges to dramatically increase humanitarian assistance to help meet the Millennium Development Goals, government aid disbursements actually fell in 2007 by 8.4 percent compared to 2006.
The tendency of some donors will be to cut back on humanitarian assistance. There is little doubt about that. But we also know that the consequences will be catastrophic for families and communities across Africa. We need to see beyond this crisis and renew our commitment to true global and equitable development. But this isn't just about economic altruism. A failure to re-commit to community-level development will inevitably see an increase in later emergency calls for funds as preventable disasters and diseases overcome struggling townships and families.
