 Beth Ferris, thanks for joining us. My pleasure. Brookings Institution is obviously a very well-respected public policy organisation. What's your role there? I'm a senior fellow there, which means I do research on a range of topics. I also co-direct a project known as the Brookings LSE project on internal displacement that really looks at humanitarian issues, particularly internally displaced persons, which really brought me to the issue of natural disasters. You spoke yesterday on the issue of civil military response to natural disasters. Right. What's the key point you wanted to get across yesterday? I think, first of all, that the number and severity of sudden onset natural disasters is going to increase. We're going to see more mega disasters, more urban disasters, more places where disasters intersect with conflicts, where disasters intersect with technological failings such as in Japan. And in those situations, the military needs to be prepared to respond quickly and in collaboration with a whole range of civilian actors. It's a complex world out there. I think the military does some things very, very well. Other areas it needs to defer to civilian leadership. And what do you think is the key to making that work? I think knowing each other, but understanding different ways of working, different jargon, different language, different procedures. Military tends to work with a command and control structure, and yet most civilian humanitarian organisations are more consensus-building and process-oriented and talking through things. And sometimes those cultures don't automatically work together really well. I guess the traditional role of the military is a bit different, and they're being asked to adapt to a variety of situations. And yet some of the real strengths of military response are desperately needed in these crises, your ability to move quickly to the logistics, the lift power, the capacity, the communications. Those are all qualities that, as I said, are urgently needed in disasters. Beth, what do you think we've learned from recent disasters that you've had some involvement in? Well, this year particularly we've seen terrible disasters happening to developed countries. You know, the floods in Australia, the New Zealand earthquake, the earthquake tsunami, nuclear accident in Japan, tornado storms in the U.S., and I think we're learning that we actually have a lot in common with developing countries when it comes to response. You know, in all of those disasters, one of the big challenges was how to deal with all the offers of international assistance. Right. That isn't something that just happens in Haiti or Pakistan, but it happens in the U.S. and Japan as well, so there are some commonalities there. I think we've learned in the past year with the mega disasters of Haiti and Pakistan that the international system doesn't do very well in responding to more than one big disaster a year. You know, it's really overstretched when Haiti happened, you know, people were pulled out of other crises and people were moved from Haiti to work in Pakistan. The system as a whole just doesn't have the capacity to respond to lots of mega disasters. So you've, prior to Brookings, you've had about 20 years in humanitarian response. What drives you to continue in this field? What's your passion? I think it's just the most wonderful work in the world. I think it's such a privilege to be able to help in one way or another people who are suffering the worst ravages of war or disasters and so on. And in those situations, you always see this wonderful outpouring of generosity and creativity and compassion from local communities in ways that's truly inspiring, you know. It makes you want to go home and raise more money or write more articles or get more attention to those situations when you see the real dedication of people on the ground. It's wonderful work. I think everyone wants to help, everyone wants to know how they can contribute. I suppose the challenge is how do you pull those resources and coordinate them in an effective way. And I think a real challenge is that the whole humanitarian enterprise is driven by volunteers, by people wanting to give, by altruism, humanitarian ideals. And yet it's a world that's becoming, needs more professional responses. You can't have just a local church group, you know, show up and distribute stuffed animals. You need to really work in a professional way. So that's sometimes a bit of attention. Beth, thanks for your time today. My pleasure. Thank you. It's wonderful to be here.