Despite the flat topography of his home country, the Netherlands, Onno Rühl was drawn to mountains early on, trekking in Austria at the age of six and spending time in Switzerland with his parents. He joined the Dutch Foreign Service, despite, he says, “not being generally known as a great diplomat,” and later the World Bank, working on Eastern Europe development after the fall of the Berlin Wall. He spent time in the former Soviet Union, the post-war Balkans and East and Southern Africa. Finally, an AKDN headhunter asked him if he would be interested in leading an agency focused on the quality of life of the people living in mountains. Sixteen interviews later, Onno became General Manager of the Aga Khan Agency for Habitat (AKAH).

While AKAH was established relatively recently, in 2016, it continues the work of institutions including FOCUS Humanitarian Assistance, which helped communities prepare for and respond to disasters, and the Aga Khan Planning and Building Services programme, which worked to ensure the structural integrity, and therefore the safety, of the built environment. “AKAH is a great name by the way, because in the local language in the mountains it means big brother, so nobody can mistake it,” says Onno.

His Highness the Aga Khan noted early on that a combination of climate change and human-made pressure on scarce resources was increasing risk. AKDN would need to be more ambitious and synergised in its activities to enable people to not only survive but do well despite the risk.

“There wasn't a head agency with an intellectual capacity to back it up. That's why he created AKAH,” explains Onno. “It's both beautiful and visionary, allowing people to live a better life despite the moving threat of climate change.

I’m working to create a conducive environment, so that children born in the high mountains of Pakistan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, in the coastal areas of India, in Syria, have the same opportunity as children born in the UK or Switzerland.”

AKAH works closely with other AKDN agencies to receive funds, share knowledge, such as its green building guidelines, and respond in emergencies. AKAH also works with institutions such as MIT, Harvard, the California Institute of Emergency Management, Johns Hopkins and Karakoram International University.

But Onno is particularly excited about the latest partner. AKAH has traditionally assessed sites for immediate risks such as avalanches, landslides and localised floods, and has added monitoring of remote risks such as glaciers. Now, it is collaborating with NASA to assess the risks 30 and 50 years ahead, to gain evidence about the long-term viability of habitats.

The partners appreciate AKAH’s community links, volunteers on the ground and staff local to each area. “It’s basically a gigantic field lab for innovation,” says Onno. “So, it's actually quite easy for us to get researchers interested and that way advance our own learning and with that advance science. Because AKDN doesn't learn for itself, it learns to share with others.”