John Holmes, the United Nations Under-Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs, said one of the biggest challenges facing the aid community was the problems stemming from changing weather patterns. "When it comes to meteorological and weather-related disasters, then there is a trend upwards connected with climate change," Holmes told AFP. "The trend is in the terms of floods, cyclones, and droughts."

Holmes, who is also the UN's emergency relief coordinator, said weather-related natural disasters were increasing in number and scale. "It's partly the very obvious things like the number and intensity of cyclones, and the amount of flooding," he said. "But is also in slightly more invisible ways -- in Africa with drought and desertification spreading."