Attachments
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Australia plays a significant role in the Indo-Pacific region, and its outreach extends globally. Australia particularly focuses on prosperity and stability within the Southwest Pacific and Southeast Asia, regions with which it is most familiar and where it is active in providing international disaster assistance, particularly to Pacific Island countries and territories (PICT). The country augments this regional focus by acting as a proponent of principled global coordination and cooperation on issues of humanitarian assistance and climate change adaptation.
The Australian Government is aware of the increasing challenges confronting the world - and the Pacific region in particular - with disasters increasing in frequency, scale, and impact. Its newly-published Humanitarian Policy (2024) prioritizes readiness and preparedness, delivering support to crisis-affected communities, and reinforcing the international humanitarian system. Meanwhile, the country’s International Development Policy of 2023 is geared toward emerging global challenges, including exacerbated climate hazards. Both policies emphasize the need to support partners in further enhancing their resilience and capacities, and they focus on strengthening preparedness and mitigation by investing in disaster risk reduction (DRR). Australia is well-positioned to conduct disaster response operations in the Southwest Pacific, where a big challenge for many small, remote PICTs is the “tyranny of distance” that slows down the arrival of external assistance after a large-scale disaster.
Australia has a range of specialized capabilities that facilitate international disaster responses under the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), which is the lead agency for the Australian Government’s response to international humanitarian crises. The value these capabilities bring to crisis responses is enhanced in the context of relationships with various PICTs and partnerships with local and international humanitarian organizations. While DFAT is Australia’s government lead in overseas assistance, it does not work alone. Interagency support comes from the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), which works with DFAT to deploy domestic disaster response capabilities, drawn from Australian states and territories, as needed for international response.
Australia also regularly deals with domestic disaster events, including wildfires, drought, heatwaves, flooding, storms, landslides, and earthquakes. Particularly catastrophic were the “Black Summer” bushfires of 2019-2020 when hundreds of fires burned for months, mainly in the country’s southeast; the fires killed 26 people, destroyed 2,448 homes, and burned 5.5 million hectares (21,236 square miles) of land. 1 This large-scale domestic disaster saw DFAT providing critical support to the NEMA (then named Emergency Management Australia) in coordinating responses to 156 offers of international assistance from 70 countries. The Black Summer bushfires prompted a reorganization of the domestic disaster management system.
Australia is a critical ally of the United States (U.S.) in ensuring a free and open Indo-Pacific region, and it plays an especially active role in international frameworks regarding coordination in responding to disasters and other humanitarian crises, DRR, climate change action, and maritime security. Australian and U.S. armed forces regularly engage together in military exercises, some of which have a strong disaster assistance focus and lead to greater interoperability when both respond to large-scale disasters in the region. As disaster risks are exacerbated by climate change and crises grow more frequent and intense across the region, the focus on meeting partners’ needs to strengthen local systems becomes increasingly critical for regional resilience.