Concept Note

Theme:

Meeting the challenges of future crises

Protecting lives and livelihoods with anticipatory action

Dates:

7th – 9th December 2021

Organizers:

The 9th Global Dialogue Platform on Anticipatory Humanitarian Action will be hosted by the Anticipation Hub and co-organized by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO) and the UN World Food Programme (WFP), with a live studio in Rome, where the two organizations have their headquarters.This Platform is organized in collaboration with German Red Cross, IFRC, Climate Centre, START Network and OCHA with the support of the German Federal Foreign Office. The co-organizing role of FAO and WFP aims to send a strong message about the urgency of scaling up the anticipatory approach to prevent food crises.

Today, there are over 155 million acutely hungry people in the world. That is 20 million more than in 2019. Over 41 million are now at risk of falling into famine or famine-like conditions. The majority of the worlds’ poorest and most vulnerable people are rural people: up to 80% of those in acute food insecurity depend on agriculture for survival. Protecting agricultural livelihoods is the key to preventing food crises.

Topics:

Elaborating on last year’s focus on the expansion of the application of anticipatory action, covering more types of shocks and addressing compounding risks, this year’s focus is on

(1) Meeting the challenges of the future, following recommendations from the UN high-level event on AA, the FSS and the COP26,

(2) Improving the AA approach through different technologies and methodologies; and

(3) Discussing innovative modalities of engagement with different stakeholders and ways to address sustainability.

Background

What if we invested in protecting people from the impact of disasters rather than wait for the worst to happen? That’s the guiding principle of anticipatory action, a kind of protective humanitarian programming that more and more agencies and governments around the world are now using to shield people from climate- and human-induced disasters. And that’s with good reason: evidence continually shows that anticipatory action supports vulnerable people at a stage when receiving aid bears the biggest results: before a crisis has taken place. This means humanitarian interventions can become investments in resilience and progress rather than recovery.

Today we are facing massive challenges: the compounding and intertwined effects of the climate crisis, rising conflicts and the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic are causing an exponential rise in acute hunger worldwide. These complex threats can only be addressed with a substantial change in the way hazards are managed.

Anticipatory humanitarian action – an approach to reduce human suffering, losses and damages ahead of an impending crisis through combining risk analysis, forecast and pre-agreed financing– represents the kind of approach required to drive a fundamental shift from a reactive to a preventive approach to crises. This innovative programming modality has gained significant momentum in recent years. Mechanisms such as the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent (IFRC) Forecast-based Action by the Disaster Relief Emergency Fund (Fba by the DREF), START Network’s Start Fund and Financing Facility and the UN Central Emergency Response Fund have been set up to enable fast and predictable financing to empower local actors and humanitarian organizations to act early at scale.

To date, over 60 countries have engaged in anticipatory plans and processes, with the support of the members of the Anticipatory Action Task Force, i.e. the Red Cross Red Crescent network (IFRC and many National Societies), the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO), the UN World Food Programme (WFP), the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and START Network. These initiatives are considered an integral part of broader resilience programming. Indeed, acting early helps protect longer-term development, adaptation and resilience gains from the immediate impact of shock, at the same time facilitating the emergency response and recovery phases. Efforts are focused on integrating the anticipatory approach within the national governmental disaster risk management frameworks.

Through capturing the learning from the pioneering forecast-based financing pilot projects, the German Red Cross (GRC), IFRC, the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre and WFP with the support from the German Federal Foreign Office initiated the first Global Dialogue Platform on Anticipatory Humanitarian Action (formerly called Dialogue Platform on Forecast-based Financing) in 2014 as an annual convening space for exchange and learning that gathers senior managers, practitioners, scientists and experts from the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, the UN, NGOs, government, academia, private corporations and the financial sector from around the world. Last year there were 893 active participants from 103 countries. It was a great success despite going virtual for the first time.

Some key achievements in 2021

In 2021, collaborative work on anticipatory action has continued and expanded at a rapid pace. OCHA has coordinated the development of inter-agency AA frameworks across a number of countries, and involving a large number of humanitarian partners. Such frameworks provide common procedures and pre-allocated financial resources to scale-up AA upon warning signs of impending threats. For instance, the AA frameworks in Nepal, Bangladesh and the Philippines, if activated, would allow FAO and WFP to protect the livelihoods and food security of about 970,000 people from floods and typhoons, thanks to pre-allocated resources amounting to about US$ 13.7 million. Furthermore FAO and partners have triggered and implemented AAs for drought before impacts on farmers and pastoralists materialized in a number of countries. AA work has also advanced with regards to conflict, including to deliver AA against natural hazards in conflict settings as well as to anticipate the immediate consequences of conflict on lives and livelihoods.

Currently, the IFRC is supporting National Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies to develop forecast-based financing in 30 countries. In 11 out of the 30 countries, National Red Cross Red Crescent Societies are developing forecast-based financing to protect livelihoods and food security. In promoting an end-to-end early warning system that translates early action in the Last Mile, IFRC - together with UK Met Office and the Climate Centre - developed guidance to promote the co-design of impact-based forecasting services between National Hydromet Services and humanitarian organizations and launched the “Call to Action” on Emergency Alerting with WMO and ITU that leverages the Common Alerting Protocol for all media and all hazards.

As of September, Start Network's Start Funds have released funds in anticipation of crises on more than 46 occasions. Start Network has also set-up Start Funds in Nepal and in Bangladesh. Its sister Start Ready approach uses risk modelling, collective planning and pre-positioned financing, to predictably fund foreseeable crises at scale. Start Ready systems are active or in development in 6 countries and will continue to expand throughout the coming year.

Updates on Anticipatory Action Partnerships

Launched at the UN Climate Action Summit in 2019, the Risk-Informed Early Action Partnership (REAP) brings together an unprecedented range of stakeholders across the climate, humanitarian and development communities with the aim of making 1 billion people safer from disaster by 2025. The partnership has recently approved the Strategic Vision and the Framework for Action, outlining the roadmap to meeting the REAP four ambitious targets. It also forms the basis for monitoring and measuring progress and success of the Partnership between now and 2025.

Launched at the Global Dialogue Platform in 2020, the Anticipation Hub – hosted by the German Red Cross in partnership with the IFRC and the Climate Centre – is a new platform facilitating knowledge exchange, learning, guidance, and advocacy around anticipatory action. It aims to support practitioners, scientists and policymakers, to do more anticipatory action, do it better and do it together, to jointly embed a culture of anticipatory action inside and beyond the humanitarian sector. The Hub works in collaboration with its 80 partners from across the Red Cross Red Crescent Movement, as well as universities, research institutes, (i)NGOs, UN agencies, governments, donors, and network initiatives, to promote exchange, stimulate innovation, and support scaling up. Read more in the Strategy of the Anticipation Hub.

Anticipatory Action in global fora

Anticipatory Action remained a prominent theme discussed in global fora such as the Humanitarian Networks and Partnerships Weeks (HNPW), where Anticipatory Action was one of the priority topics; the G7 talks where support has been announced for climate affected countries and communities through new funding commitments as well as support towards the Risk-informed Early Action Partnership (REAP) and InsuResilience Global Partnership (IGP); the ECOSOC side event on The Challenges Ahead: Equipping the Future with Anticipatory Action, which provided concrete suggestions on how to achieve joint ambitions to scale up anticipatory action; and the recent High-Level Humanitarian Event on Anticipatory Action, where more than 75 governments and 60 aid agencies, international financial institutions, and private-sector companies have committed to acting early to mitigate the effects of crises, making new pledges of anticipatory financing.

Ahead of this year's GDP, there will still be two key events that will help the anticipatory action community define our challenges and opportunities. The Food System Summit (FSS), happening in September, where Anticipatory Action will be highlighted in 1) the Humanitarian Development Peace Nexus, through the support of solutions that make food systems conflict-resilient and enhance the prospects for peace, and in 2) the Climate-resilient Development Pathways, specifically under the Climate Risk Reduction and Risk Management action track. The COP26, where many partners will participate in a series of events to highlight the main achievements and challenges of anticipatory humanitarian action in the face of the ongoing climate crisis.