"The goal is scalability”, said Richard Ragan, WFP Country Director in Bangladesh, in his opening words, mentioning that WFP did protect 145 000 people in Bangladesh from the floods this summer through anticipatory action, but that millions more would have needed assistance.
WFP is now working in 15 countries across Asia, Africa and the Caribbean on Forecast-based Financing in collaboration with governments and a diverse group of humanitarian actors and scientists. The goal of all WFP projects is to integrate anticipatory action in the partner countries’ national disaster management frameworks and to make them scalable. WFP started anticipatory action in Bangladesh, Nepal and the Philippines with a focus on fast onset disasters, mainly floods and cyclones. According to Richard, all of these countries have now developed components of FbF systems that are integrated – to varying degrees – into the national DRM frameworks. For the next years, Richards underlines, four topics that WFP will keep looking at (1) Scaling up implementation of AA for food security through good solid SOPs that governments can activate, (2) generating an evidence base “we have to prove this concept works, document the impacts, and show the value added of investing in anticipatory action”, (3) institutionalising FbF into WFP, it needs to become part the organization’s DNA and (4) getting governments to adopt the principles of anticipatory action.