New models for anticipatory and rapid response funding

Donors are changing their expectations. The UK government believes the cost of preparing for and responding to disasters should be financed through government-led and private sector-partnered arrangements, which draw on insurance and other risk-based finances, in order to ensure standby funds.

There is an increasing number of national ‘safety net’ funding initiatives. An established example is the national Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP) in Ethiopia, set up in 2005 during a period of prolonged rainfall uncertainty (in 2009, the rains failed completely). Food insecure households were targeted with increased cash and food transfers early, rather than waiting until food insecurity caused extreme malnourishment and deaths (IFRC 2014).

The UK government (specifically DfID), in collaboration with the IFRC, is increasingly providing funding for the rapid and anticipatory response of Start Network humanitarian agencies.

Your task

Go to the Start Fund website and read about the initiative.

Using the Alerts Dashboard, identify the range of threats and hazards we’re now able to anticipate.

Many of the responses have a crisis response summary that can be downloaded. These summaries give an overview of the funds, those reached, activation time and lessons learned.

How and when might anticipatory funding have been provided in the run-up to and early days of the Pakistan floods?

Reference

_{International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) (2014) Early Warning Early Action: Mechanisms for Rapid Decision Making [online] available from https://www.preventionweb.net/publications/view/42670 [21 April 2020]}