Building on the successful piloting efforts of recent years, the vision now is to scale up and mainstream anticipatory action as an approach across disaster risk management processes and frameworks. Adequate, long-term and coordinated resources are needed to bring anticipatory approaches to scale. A substantial part of the investments will be needed to assure that early warnings also lead to early actions. This requires strengthening impact-based forecasting, including predictive analytics and forecasting capacities.

But the best science is of limited help if it does not reach the communities at most risk. The feasibility of implementing anticipatory actions in the short time window between a trigger and the impact of the event depends highly on the capacity of the local actors. Drawing from the recently published World Disasters Report, the Early Action Focus Task Force policy asks and other relevant reports released this year, learn from the about the most recent efforts in guiding investment to scale up anticipatory action.

Duygu Bayramoglu

Panellists were asked to share progress on policies in anticipatory action, particularly with regards to the investment required to go to scale and reach communities most at risk.
The consensus was striking. All agreed that we need to urgently scale up, collaborate and “break the silos”, as well as mainstream anticipatory action into national systems across policies and plans.
In asking “Can you join us?”, Zoe Scott, alongside fellow panellists, called for collaboration in the face of multi-hazard risks, noting two critical points for improvement: i) to be more inclusive and flexible in pre-arranged financing, and ii) to expand pre-arranged financing. The solution lies in an interconnected system that is based on predicting needs.
Jesse Mason, WFP, Global Coordinator FbF Programmes left us with some beautiful parting words: “The passion and will is there. It takes the collective push to make the big changes that we hope for.”