The closing remarks emphasised the important role for governments in adopting the anticipatory action approach and embedding it into national policies and frameworks to ensure its long-term sustainability. The crucial role of continuing to exchange knowledge, build partnerships and continuously learn from each other was also highlighted.

Mohammad Mohsin from the Ministry of Disaster Management And Relief, Secretary, Bangladesh shared how they have taken leadership to embed anticipatory action into national policies and coordination mechanisms including the Standing Orders on Disasters and Task Force on Forecast-based Action. He also emphasised the need to create more evidence to demonstrate the benefits of anticipatory action.

Robert Kasca, World Food Programme, Country Director Nepal highlights how critical it is for anticipatory action to now scale-up, for eventual handover to the government, and how government participation is critical for sustainability. He said that past interventions, like the cash transfers of 2020/21, have built the foundations for this work, and mentioned the work that still needs to be done such as a critical review of triggers. Anticipatory action is critical and we see that manifest in the monsoon season in Nepal which was supposed to be over but we continue to face several floods in the country; luckily we activated the FbA despite the short lead time and today had the cash transfer. Robert ended thanking the Platform participants, benefiting new ideas and potential partnerships shared in this forum.

Alexander Matheou, IFRC APRO Regional Director emphasised the growing availability of data and scientific information and the impressive work by partners to enable anticipatory action - highlighting how ““the 5th Asia Pacific Dialogue Platform is a testimony to the momentum that anticipatory action has gained”. He encouraged participants to utilise this growing momentum to scale up and ensure links between anticipatory action and health, displacement, conflict.

The closing session ended by recapping on the cartoons summaries produced over the three days highlighting various key messages including the need to act earlier, act faster and act together, while expanding flexible, coordinated and predictable financing and ensuring governments are a central player in the scale up and institutionalising of anticipatory action. Organisers ended by sharing their favourite moments highlighting how much fun they had using GatherTown to interact with participants over the three days and their excitement to connect the outcomes of the platform to COP26 and the Global Dialogue Platform.