Earlier this week, Foreign Affairs Minister Murray McCully announced that a further $2.975 million would be provided to the Filipino government in the aftermath of the devastatingly destructive Typhoon Haiyan. The additional funding will take New Zealand’s total contribution to the cause to more than $5 million.

The voluntary transfer of money, goods and services from one nation to another is never exempt from debate. But there is a great difference between the two most common forms of foreign aid: humanitarian aid and development aid. Arguably, one is far more viable than the other.

Humanitarian aid is material or logistical assistance designed to save lives and alleviate suffering in the aftermath of natural or man-made disaster.

An overwhelming majority of those affected by such disasters – as is the case with Typhoon Haiyan which has left an estimated 4000 people dead – reside in developing countries, the most vulnerable to natural hazards and least equipped to help themselves when disaster strikes.

But it isn’t only developing nations that require immediate emergency assistance.

In the aftermath of the Christchurch earthquake that killed almost 200 people, New Zealand received emergency humanitarian aid from multiple nations including Australia, Japan, Taiwan, Britain and Singapore among others.

Development aid, conversely, is financial aid given by governments and other agencies to support the social, economic and political development of developing nations over the long term.

Dambisa Moyo, a Zambian-born economist who has written extensively on the impact of foreign development aid on developing nations, argues that unlike humanitarian aid, which addresses a temporary spike in resource demand, development aid can lock impoverished nations into a never-ending cycle of corruption, disease, poverty and aid-dependency.

In Moyo’s own words: “[Development] aid has been, and continues to be, an unmitigated political, economic, and humanitarian disaster for most parts of the developing world.”

Whether development aid and the transfer of money can actually promote economic and social development is subject to much scepticism. After all, despite more than $300 billion in development aid since the 1970’s, many developing African nations have not progressed much. Development aid it seems, more often than not, performs the political function of maintaining the status quo.

Foreign aid is always a topic of considerable controversy. However, as demonstrated by Typhoon Haiyan, catastrophic events can strike at any time. New Zealand’s contribution to the Philippines, a nation in dire need of emergency humanitarian aid, should be met with praise rather than criticism.