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The purpose of this paper is to investigate humanitarian supply chains in the context of the Ukrainian crisis as example of complex emergency. The paper focuses on a selection of support modes: in-kind donations, cash-based assistance and local procurement.

This paper adopts a case-study approach and interpretive paradigm. Findings are based on the analysis of primary sources including interviews with three Polish humanitarian organizations, internal documents, and secondary sources such as published reports.

Findings indicate that in a middle-income urbanized country such as Ukraine non-standard modes such as cash transfer programs and local procurement can be employed, since the necessary infrastructure and market are operational. However, each mode has limitations, so they should match the local context and the needs of diverse social groups.

The findings and recommendations are specific to the case analyzed, Ukraine, and its socio-economic context. The research contributes to discussions about mode selection, stressing the links between mode, stage of the disaster response and local context.

Applying cash transfers and local procurement can reduce supply chain costs, such as transport and warehousing. Shortened supply chains enable faster responses and increased agility.

Cash transfers and procurement involve the local community and beneficiaries, and can better fulfill needs maintaining people’s dignity. However, for vulnerable groups and those in conflict zones, in-kind goods are a better option.

The author argues that the much-discussed dichotomy of cash or goods does not reflect reality; local and regional procurement should be added as important support modes in middle-income countries in crisis.

The authors investigate natural disasters’ impact on manufacturing and services foreign direct investment (FDI), both, in contemporaneous and time-lag contexts. Manufacturing and services FDI account for different types of technology transfers, respectively, through tangible physical assets and intangible knowledge assets. This paper aims to hypothesize that natural disasters that have pronounced physical impact, have different effect on different sectoral FDI.

The authors merge a data set from emergency events database, which covers natural disasters occurrences with a sector-level data on FDI for 69 countries for the period 1980-2011, distinguishing between four different kinds of natural disasters such as meteorological, climate, hydrological and geophysical, as well as between different geographical regions.

Controlling for commonly accepted determinants of FDI, such as output growth, quality of institutions and natural resource abundance, the authors find that manufacturing FDI is negatively affected immediately after the disaster and positively in the longer run- a finding that is in unison with the “creative destruction” growth theory. Services FDI, on the other hand, do not show such pattern. Meteorological disasters have no effect on services FDI and climate and hydrological disasters have long-lasting negative effects. For both, manufacturing and services FDI, geophysical disasters have a positive impact on FDI in the long run.

The study is limited to 69 countries for the period 1980-2011.

FDI bears tangible and intangible knowledge assets and provides means of financing, even in countries with under-developed banking systems and stock markets. FDI is impacted by climate change, manifested by intensifying and increase of frequency of natural disasters.

Natural disasters destroy infrastructure and displace people. The rebuilding of infrastructure and intangible capital present an opportunity for upgrading.

This is the first study that analyzes the impact of natural disasters on sector-level FDI in a multicounty and regional context.

This paper focuses on the adaptations societies make to climate-related disasters. How they learnt from them in the past should indicate how they will respond in the more climate-stressed future. National typhoon disaster politics arise when citizens demand disaster protection from their state.

The paper analyzes one episode of typhoon politics in each of three Asian countries before 1945: the Philippines (1928), India (1942) and Japan (1934). These three countries show high variance in state capacity and level of democracy. Discourse data are found in contemporary newspaper accounts.

In each case, the typhoon disaster politics were shaped by the “distance” (geographical, institutional, class and cultural) between citizen-victims and the state. Where that distance was great (rural Philippines, Bengal-India), the state tended to minimise victimhood. Where it was small (urban Japan), adaptation was serious and rapid.

The findings should stimulate public discussion of the way in which past social relations and power dynamics surrounding climate-related disasters might influence the present. As the political character of climate change adaptation grows clearer, so does the need for debate to be well-informed.

Most historical work on climate-related disasters has focused either on the natural phenomena, or on their societal impact. The present paper's focus on adaptation is part of a small but growing scholarly effort to bend the debate towards the evolution of adaptive capacity.