External
Humanitarian Funding & Donor Dynamics
Donor dependency vs. diversification (crowdfunding, impact investment, PPPs); rise of new donors; shifting priorities and transparency.
Effective across radically different futures?
How the scenarios were built
The Future of Aid 2040 study combines two complementary foresight traditions to explore how global and systemic forces are reshaping aid:
Causal Layered Analysis (CLA) reveals the deeper narratives, worldviews, and myths that underpin humanitarian action.
La Prospective maps the key drivers of change and their interactions to build plausible, decision-ready scenarios.
Together, these methods reveal not only what could happen but why.
During Phase 1, a global community of aid practitioners and crisis-affected people engaged through a series of consultations to analyse the drivers transforming both the global environment and the aid system, and to identify the crisis patterns the sector must prepare for.
This participatory process culminated in a comprehensive Causal Layered Analysis and the co-design of four future scenarios, consolidated in two core publications: Unpacking the Aid System: Laying the Groundwork for Transformation and Future of Aid 2040: Scenario Report.
Explore the Phase 1 consultations
Futures Thinking — Exploring the aid landscape over the next 15 years, identifying key drivers and worldviews. → Watch recording, Download presentation here: EN, FR, ES
Types of Crises — Analysing potential vulnerabilities and preparedness strategies for emerging crisis patterns. → Watch recording, Download presentation here EN, FR, ES
Scenarios for 2040 — Developing possible futures and strategic responses for a resilient, adaptive aid sector. → Watch recording, Download presentation here EN, FR, ES
From Drivers to Scenarios to Implications
Through this global foresight process, 25 drivers were analysed: from geopolitical realignment, climate disruption, and digital governance to localisation, funding models, and public trust.
These were distilled into five critical drivers that underpin four alternative futures for the aid system.
Each scenario highlights how organisations can remain effective, legitimate, and locally anchored in radically different contexts.
Key Drivers
External
Climate Change, Water Scarcity & Environmental Degradation
Extreme weather, biodiversity loss, ecological transition, and competition over natural resources and water.
External
Digital Technology & AI
AI adoption and regulation, cyber security, data governance, and widening digital divides/infrastructure gaps.
Internal
Power Shift & Localisation
Local leadership, devolution of decision-making, governance shifts in aid delivery, and self-determination of affected populations.
Internal
Funding Models Inside the Aid System
Managing dependency, building alternative revenue streams, and reimagining accountability for finance and results.
Scenarios
S1 — Aid on Many Paths
A multipolar world where regional alliances lead response, and local actors shape governance and funding models.
S2 — Patchwork Solidarities
Fragmented yet adaptive solidarities emerge as instability grows; agile local networks and short-term aid fill institutional gaps.
S3 — Empires of Aid
Aid becomes a geopolitical instrument of competing powers; NGOs operate under tighter control serving rival blocs’ interests.
S4 — The Great Unravelling
Systemic collapse into isolation and crisis; many aid actors vanish, leaving communities to sustain solidarity alone.
Implications
Stress-test your strategy
Wind-tunnel priorities across the four futures; identify the most robust bets.
Adapt & de-prioritise
Decide what to keep, adapt, drop, and what’s missing for future-fitness.
Back-casting pathways
Map milestones from 2040 back to today; align capabilities and partnerships.
Local leadership first
Invest in agency, anticipatory action, and legitimate, locally-led governance.
Typology of Crises
In humanitarian practice, “crisis” often suggests a single, acute event. Yet in reality, crises are co-produced outcomes of multiple, interacting systems: environmental, social, political, technological, and institutional.
They result from both the forces that destabilise societies and the capacity of those societies, and of the aid system itself, to absorb shocks and recover.
Drawing on insights from 877 contributors to Future of Aid 2040, three interlocking dimensions consistently emerged as determinants of crisis severity, duration, and transformative potential:
Aid System Configuration — The structure and behaviour of the aid ecosystem itself. Crisis outcomes depend on how coherent, inclusive, and timely response systems are. Fragmentation or politicisation can turn local stress into systemic breakdown.
Destabilisers — Broad, often transboundary pressures such as climate shocks, armed conflict, economic collapse, pandemics, or political repression. They can strike suddenly (a cyclone, a coup) or erode systems gradually (livelihood loss, governance decay).
Community Resilience — How these forces are experienced and mediated depends on access to resources, inclusion, and social cohesion. Resilience is not static but a process of agency: the ability to adapt and recover through trust and local capacity.
Crisis occurs where these dimensions intersect: when destabilisation meets vulnerability and institutional weakness. Recognising crises as co-produced shifts the focus from reaction to anticipation: understanding where pressures are rising, which communities are most at risk, and how aid systems can reconfigure to act earlier and more coherently.
This triadic model forms the analytical backbone of Future of Aid 2040, helping humanitarian actors see crises not as isolated failures but as symptoms of structural interaction, and opportunities for transformation and locally-led resilience.
Typology of seven crisis form
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Erosive crisis
Destabiliser: Slow pressures — climate, inflation, scarcity
Communities subjected to systemic pressures are neglected by the progressive disengagement of aid (both international and domestic), eroding their resilience and leaving them on the brink of disaster. Most acutely felt by rural communities. E.g., non-conflict Sahelian zones, Omo Valley, Madagascar.
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Weaponised crisis
Destabiliser: Sudden shocks — disaster, war, pogrom
Violent or sudden shocks trap or displace populations and cut access to basic services. Civilians become targets or collateral, and responses are heavily politicised. E.g., Gaza 2023, Rohingya, Tigré.
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Technocratic fallout
Destabiliser: Technological / bureaucratic / health failures
Automated systems or bureaucratic breakdowns leave people falling through the cracks. Excluded groups have no recourse. E.g., AI screening of asylum seekers in the EU. Poor preparedness for disruption (Covid-19, large-scale blackouts) isolates vulnerable urban populations.
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Protracted collapse
Destabiliser: Post-crisis decay / dissolution of the rule of law
Long crises persist after attention fades; institutions collapse and rule of law dissolves. Populations are exhausted, surviving through informal economies. E.g., Haiti, South Sudan, Central African Republic.
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Persecution & disenfranchisement
Destabiliser: Imbalances in the treatment of communities
Certain groups are persecuted for gender, sexuality, religion, status, or beliefs; systems fail to protect or reinstate their rights. E.g., LGBTQ+ populations criminalised or excluded.
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Strategic abandonment
Destabiliser: Wilful inaction / neglect
Aid and investment are deliberately withdrawn from areas of low strategic value, isolating communities and accelerating decline. E.g., Nagorno-Karabakh, depopulated rural regions.
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Ecosystemic crises
Destabiliser: Cascading cross-system breakdowns
Interconnected human, natural, and institutional systems fail simultaneously. Initial shocks amplify vulnerabilities, break social cohesion, and overwhelm response capacity. E.g., financial collapse triggering mass protests and infrastructure breakdown.
Triadic Approach of Crisis Typology
A Aid System Configuration • B Destabilisers • C Community Resilience
Typology:
Why It Matters
Recognising crises as systemic and co-produced challenges traditional humanitarian models. It calls for a shift from short-term response to long-term transformation: anticipating risk, preventing breakdown, and strengthening local agency.
These insights now inform Phase 2 — Pathways to Transformation, where organisations use the 2040 scenarios to stress-test, adapt, and re-design their strategies for the future.