Mali and Zambia, potentially added by South Sudan, Ivory Coast and/or Central African Republic.

The Climate Centre enables the Red Cross Red Crescent and partners to leverage technical support, bridge gaps and bring coherence to the implementation of humanitarian, development and climate strategies from the local to global level. To avoid duplication of effort the Climate Centre will bridge across all humanitarian organisations involved in Anticipatory Action as well as engaging fully in umbrella efforts such as the Anticipation Hub to support evidence-led learning and development. Following its commitment to the localisation agenda, the Climate Centre aims to strengthen and support links between National Societies and government agencies, supporting co-development of locally-owned robust impact-based forecasts which can directly feed into both contingency plans and protocols for access to DREF funding. In conflict and post-conflict settings where engagement and co-development with government agencies may be unrealistic the Climate Centre will support the development of adaptable plans for anticipatory action. The Climate Centre will also deepen its engagement with strategic academic partners, both as an opportunity to shape interdisciplinary research agendas and bring through the latest scientific research, evidence and understanding into anticipatory action, but also to harness their higher education experience to support learning and development within the growing anticipatory action community.

The direct beneficiaries of this project are the National Societies that are part of the Response Preparedness 2022-2026 programme, as their capacities will be strengthened thanks to the technical support provided by RCCC. Indirectly and at a later stage, the beneficiaries are those populations who are vulnerable to the effects of climate related hazards, who are aimed to be reached with anticipatory humanitarian action based on pre-defined thresholds through the Impact-based Forecasting methodology.

This project covers the technical support provided by the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre (RCCC) on Forecast-based Financing within the Netherlands Red Cross (NLRC) Response Preparedness 2022-2026 programme. RCCC will work hand in hand with the staff from Red Cross implementing National Societies of Zambia and Mali, and where needed also in South Sudan, Ivory Coast and Central African Republic, to set up and improve their work on Anticipatory Humanitarian Action.

Traditionally, humanitarian agencies responded to crises after they began. However, this approach can take time: agencies must assess needs, then draw up response plans and source the necessary funds. Meanwhile lives and livelihoods are lost due to the unfolding crisis and the significant time lag between the onset of the shock and the delivery of urgent assistance. Yet scientific progress over recent decades means that we can now make increasingly precise predictions about when and where hurricanes, drought, floods and other shocks are likely to occur, and what their likely impacts on people will be. These advances in forecasting make anticipatory action possible. Anticipatory action refers to actions taken before a crisis hits to prevent or reduce potential disaster impacts prior to a shock or before acute impacts are felt. The actions are carried out based on forecasts or predictions of how the event will unfold. The types of actions are varied and depend on the hazard and context and can range from evacuation, the reinforcement of homes and the distribution of health protection kits to mobile cooling centres and cash distribution. Implementing anticipatory action requires developing pre-agreed action plans for response, setting out what early actions will be taken, based on what triggers, and tying that to pre-agreed and reliable financial resources. This is important because the frequency and severity of extreme weather events have increased and will continue to do so. The number of disasters such as floods, storms and heatwaves, has been increasing since the 1960s and has risen almost 35% since the 1990s. The impacts of these disasters can include deaths, large-scale forced displacement, food insecurity, disease outbreaks, and loss of livelihoods. The World Bank estimates that upgrading early warning and early action capacity in all developing countries could save some 23,000 lives and avert the destruction of between US$300 million and $2 billion in assets every year. Anticipatory action is a no-regrets approach: it can reduce the burden of emergency response and make it more effective, even if the crisis doesn’t turn into an extreme event.