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The EC DELVE Support Action project has analyzed the bottlenecks in the transfer of Humanitarian Demining (HD)
technology from technology development to the use in the field, and drawn some lessons learned, basing itself on the
assessment of the European Humanitarian Demining Research and Technology Development (RTD) situation from early
1990 until 2006. The situation at the European level was analyzed with emphasis on activities sponsored by the
European Commission (EC). This was also done for four European countries and Japan, with emphasis on national
activities. The developments in HD during the last 10 years underline the fact that in a number of cases demining related
developments have been terminated or at least put on hold.
The study also showed that the funding provided by the EC under the Framework Program for RTD has led directly to
the creation of an extensive portfolio of Humanitarian Demining technology development projects. The latter provided a
range of research and supporting measures addressing the critical issues identified as a result of the regulatory policies
developed in the field of Humanitarian Demining over the last ten years. However, the range of instruments available to
the EC to finance the necessary research and development were limited, to pre-competitive research. The EC had no
tools or programs to directly fund actual product development. As a first consequence, the EC funding program for
development of technology for Humanitarian Demining unfortunately proved to be largely unsuitable for the small-scale
development needed in a field where there is only a very limited market. As a second consequence, most of the research
has been demonstrator-oriented. Moreover, the timeframe for RTD in Humanitarian Demining has not been sufficiently
synchronized with the timeframe of the EC policies and regulations. The separation of the Mine Action and RTD
funding streams in the EC did also negatively affect the take-up of new technologies.
As a conclusion, creating coherence between: (1) the EC policy based on political decisions, (2) RTD, testing and
industrialization of equipment, and (3) timely deployment, requires a new way of coordinated thinking: "end-to-end
planning" has to be supported by a well organized and coordinated organizational structure involving different DGs and
even extending beyond the EU. This was not the case for Mine Action, but appears today to be the case for
Environmental Risk Management.
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