Early warning systems in fragile, conflict-affected and violent contexts: takeaways for anticipatory action

In recent months, a bevy of outputs have focused on the application of early warnings and early action, including anticipatory action, in areas affected by fragility, conflict and violence (FCV). One of these is a handbook on early warning systems and early action in FCV contexts by the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Centre of Excellence for Climate and Disaster Resilience.

This and other publications offer practical tools and considerations for practitioners, as well as government actors, donors and researchers engaged in this approach. They also represent a wider shift in awareness of the critical need to develop early warning systems, and to implement early and anticipatory actions, in areas affected by FCV. This is important given the significant rise in the impacts of both conflict and climate change, which in turn intersect with other existing vulnerabilities in many countries. This reality makes it increasingly urgent to identify meaningful actions that can be taken to protect people ahead of forecast hazards.

How fragility, conflict and violence affect early warning systems

The UNDRR-WMO Centre of Excellence handbook shares considerations for the design and implementation of early warning systems in different FCV contexts, with a focus on governance, coordination, finance and technology. This includes outlining many of the impacts that FCV have on the four core areas of early warning systems:

1. Disaster risk knowledge and management
2. Detection, observation, monitoring, analysis and forecasting
3. Warning dissemination and communication
4. Preparedness and response capabilities.

Anticipatory action is generally seen as part of the fourth area – preparedness and response – but it cannot take place effectively without investment in the others. The handbook includes takeaways for each area; many are relevant to the application of anticipatory action in FCV contexts; some of these are discussed here.

Anticipatory action is often built on under-investment in the components of early warning systems – which are less robust in FCV contexts

As noted, for anticipatory action to be effective, the other core areas of early warning systems must also be financed and implemented effectively. Yet in many countries, especially those with FCV contexts, this is not the case.

One such investment gap is in systems for weather forecasting and climate predictions. Of the estimated 700 million US dollars pledged for early action in 2021, only 106 million went towards developing early warning systems – and within this restricted amount, funding for weather and climate data is low. The investment gap is often starker in FCV-affected countries, where needs are greater: where monitoring infrastructure might have been destroyed due to conflict, or where access to forecasting systems is restricted or fully cut off. Chad, South Sudan and Sudan are some of the FCV-affected countries where the coverage of early warning systems is ‘less than basic’.

Further investments in observation infrastructure and international data exchange are needed, including ground-truthing global models through local measurements. This financing is also rarely available, however. Yet without these investments, early action and anticipatory action practitioners may lack the data needed to make informed decisions. A pilot project for flooding in South Sudan, for example, was unable to identify forecasts with sufficient accuracy to develop a formal framework for anticipatory action. More positively, a retrospective analysis pointed towards the accuracy of weather forecasting for floods and drought in 20 FCV-affected countries, suggesting that early action and anticipatory action are possible in these contexts.

Addressing the intersection of climate, conflict and vulnerability

The ongoing – and positive – buzz around anticipatory action risks presenting it as a stand-alone action that can be implemented in isolation from other programmes and investments. In reality, it is dependent on the other core areas of early warning systems and, to be effective, it needs to be embedded within wider efforts towards disaster risk reduction. This is equally true when applying this approach in FCV-affected countries.

At present, there is a dire need to develop and strengthen early warning systems in FCV-affected countries. Without doing so, the ambitions of the Early Warning for All initiative (EW4All) cannot become a reality. Encouragingly, there is work ongoing by the EW4All initiative to support such countries, for example through financing to implement their EW4All action plans.

As the anticipatory action community continues to develop and implement this approach in FCV settings, it is critical that all the core areas of early warning systems remain in sharp focus, as these enable anticipatory actions and other early actions to be implemented. At the same time, anticipatory action frameworks must integrate conflict analysis and recognize compounding risks. Multi-hazard early warning systems that incorporate conflict monitoring alongside hydrometeorological hazards can help with this, as they recognize the needs of populations living at the intersection of conflict and climate hazards.