Training and Exercises

Training and exercises offer several opportunities to systematically integrate environmental concerns throughout emergency response and recovery. Including environmental actors and making environmental concerns an explicit component of trainings and exercises are crucial to strengthening regional, national and local response capacities for addressing environment in response. Trainings should assist humanitarian actors in integrating environmental concerns in their work, and help environmental actors understand the processes of emergency response and recovery. Trainings and exercises are a great way of bringing humanitarian and environmental actors together, which facilitates the development of a broader emergency response network, builds trust amongst the actors and establishes communication channels. Ultimately, such events are some of the most important ways to develop needed capacities to bring about environmental mainstreaming in humanitarian action and prepare for environmental emergencies.

Environmental concerns can be integrated into exercises either as an add-on, for example, including environmental components in emergency response exercises, or by developing exercises with a strong environmental focus, such as a full-scale simulation exercise for an environmental emergency. Integrating environmental concerns in workshops, tabletop or functional exercises  familiarizes emergency responders to environmental thinking and helps integrate environment in disaster response. Exercises are crucial to identifying gaps and assessing what technical environmental expertise is required. This information can then be used to design new trainings and/or request external assistance.