Respect to this formidable group of anticipation warriors! Irene Amuron sees so much more discussion than ever before about anticipatory action, bringing us beyond pilot projects towards proper implementation: Dialogue Platforms are an opportunity to take stock and reflect but Irene questions if we are doing enough and how exactly have we grown?
Similarly, Halima Saado asked “In light of the investments that have been done so far, how much more needs to be done to scale up anticipatory action? Do we need more funding, should we increase geographical coverage, ensure community voices are maintained … what more can be done?”

Randa Merghani isn't convinced we are doing enough, reflecting on the amount of people still suffering each year. Still, she sees progress, reflecting on OCHA´s multi-stakeholder anticipation experience in Somalia last year (via the UN CERF), where learnings showed the importance of: making enough resources available; choosing the right early interventions; using the varying strengths of all partners; aligning trigger models and agreeing on timing and responsibilities. She sees too many silos still: “overall, it takes great courage, time, and strong leadership across the entire humanitarian system to ensure sustainable implementation of anticipatory humanitarian action”.

Phoebe Shikuku stressed the importance of the AATF or Anticipatory Action Taskforce (IFRC, WFP, FAO, Start Network, OCHA) and their 5 key policy asks:

1. Invest in early warning and preparedness at the local level
2. Expand flexible and predictable and coordinated financing.
3. Make anticipatory action applicable to a wider variety of hazards,
4. Encourage collective learning, coordination, and partnerships Exchange, collective learning, coordination and partnerships around the world.
5. Mainstream anticipatory action into national disaster management systems (DRM).

Finally Kara Siahaan, elaborated on the Red Cross Red Crescent Movement story in anticipation since 2008, continuing on to describe 2030 plans to triple the size of the Disaster Relief Emergency Fund (DREF) budget to CHF 100 million (25% for anticipation), and underlining the efforts of the AATF, REAP and Anticipation Hub in bringing us to do all this “together”. Kara made an important point that anticipatory approaches tend to focus on immediate and visible events rather than on creeping and less visible crises such as heat waves or on more complex hazards such as droughts or epidemics (people reached and geographic scope is still relatively limited). While early research exists, anticipatory approaches have not been widely applied in the context of fragility, conflict, and violence, so we clearly have to work on compound risk with the triple Cs of Climate, Conflict and COVID.

In short: much more needs to be done for a system wide shift.