Anticipatory Action has been gaining increasing traction with donors, humanitarian agencies, and disaster risk managers over the last few years.
What is Anticipatory Action?
The term anticipatory action refers to methods of providing critical support to at-risk communities before disasters occur or at least before the full extent of a disaster’s effects occur. This is done by using forecasts or early warnings of imminent shock or stress with the aim to reduce or mitigate the impact of disasters and enhance post disaster responses.
Forecast-based financing is when pools of funds are made available for humanitarian action, triggered by scientific forecasts of extreme weather events. The Red Cross Red Crescent Movement used this method in 2015-2016 in Peru during El Niño – an oscillation of the ocean-atmosphere system in the tropical Pacific. Existing data showed that past El Niño-related events lead to strong rains, floods and severe droughts which had a large impact on health, drinking water, food security and housing. By utilising the FbF method, it was possible to use the funds to ensure basic needs, such as drinking water, would be met at the time that communities needed it most.
Forecast-based action is when actions are taken in the window between the release of a forecast and the occurrence of a disaster or crisis. In 2017, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization triggered an early warning mechanism for predicted droughts in Madagascar, which could seriously harm food security in certain areas. This enabled humanitarian actors to provide 8,460 households with seeds for crops with a short growing cycle and agricultural tools, distribute water pumps, water storage solutions and micro-irrigation systems, and train community leaders and workers on farming techniques and crop diversification. This action enabled the effected communities to produce and store more food to see them through the peak of the crisis.
The benefits
Anticipatory action can help save more lives and reduce the suffering of beneficiaries, as well as offset some of the economic impacts of disasters and crises. It enables actors and communities to be more prepared; and improves the effectiveness of response and recovery efforts, while reducing reliance on ad hoc, slow and often costly post disaster humanitarian aid. It is a much more proactive method of delivering humanitarian aid.
While anticipatory action is about practice on the ground, it needs to be rooted in research-based evidence that is produced with regards to anticipatory action methods, which ensure the effectiveness of forecasting systems are improved. This in turn, further improves the efficiency of anticipatory action models as a whole.
The drawbacks
As it stands, there isn’t a huge amount of evidence on anticipatory action projects because it is still a relatively new model of providing aid. Studies that have taken place are of varying quality and most are produced by the implementing agencies. Independent studies are scarce and there is a significant set of challenges when conducting thorough research on anticipatory action.
Quantifiable data: It is very difficult to quantify the effectiveness of anticipatory action methods, particularly in monetary terms, as each action is different and used in different contexts with many variables. For instance, some countries have much better records on historical natural disasters and more advanced data on previous crises than others. Anticipatory action projects in countries with less available data will need to invest more in initial data collection and research to advise the action strategies. This variable makes it difficult to calculate a return on investment as it is subject to change depending on context.
Disasters: It is difficult to carry out thorough research during times of disaster and crisis.
Diversity and context: Because anticipatory actions are designed to meet specific needs within a specific context, the same methods will not necessarily work across contexts or yield the same results elsewhere, making it difficult to compare and contrast results and research. For example, a project to mitigate the economic impact of flooding in Bangladesh by providing businesses with cash transfers prior to the crisis will have a completely different set of targets, goals, predicted outcomes and results to a project aimed at providing training to health centres in Malawi in anticipation of a cholera outbreak.
Conditionals: There is currently no agreed upon universal system of measurement to evaluate the effectiveness of anticipatory actions. Existing studies have taken different perspectives on what the costs and benefits of anticipatory action should be compared against.
The future
While there are drawbacks to anticipatory action at the moment, this is mainly focused on the research aspect. Although currently there is not a huge amount of evidence, the evidence that we do have suggests there are positive returns on investment for donors and beneficial impacts on communities who do initiate some type of anticipatory action.
Acting early is intuitive, makes logical sense and mitigates the full impact of disasters and crises. The more anticipatory actions are utilised, the more the evidence base will grow, causing better research practices and informing future actions. It’s proactive rather than reactive, and paves the way for more long-term solutions within humanitarian aid and disaster relief efforts.
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