Strengthening partnerships for Anticipatory Action: The UK FCDO joins as a partner of the Anticipation Hub
The Anticipation Hub is excited to announce that the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) of the United Kingdom has formally joined as our 75th partner. They are the second donor government to join our diverse range of partners across the Red Cross Red Crescent Movement, (i)NGOs, UN agencies, universities and research institutes, governments, donors, network initiatives and more. This partnership is a great opportunity for our partners and the wider anticipatory action community to exchange knowledge with our FCDO focal points through our working groups and other activities, to share learning, stimulate innovative ideas and support collaboration.
FCDO has provided significant support over the past years to enhance early warning and early action. FCDO funds applied research projects and programmes that connect scientists and practitioners to bridge knowledge gaps, examples include Weather and Climate Information Services for Africa (WISER), Science for Humanitarian Emergencies and Resilience (SHEAR) and Asia Regional Resilience to a Changing Climate (ARRCC). In particular, the SHEAR programme is currently the largest research project focused on anticipatory action and works in close partnership with different humanitarian organizations, including many Anticipation Hub partners. The Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre acts as the knowledge broker for the SHEAR programme and is facilitating enhanced connections and collaboration on knowledge exchange, learning and training through the Anticipation Hub. The Anticipation Hub will play an important role in sharing learning and exchanging lessons from such applied research programmes. We look forward to stimulating continued innovation and learning within the anticipatory action community to jointly strengthen the evidence-base needed to achieve anticipatory action at scale.
Furthermore, we expect this partnership to strengthen our continued collaboration with the Risk-informed Early Action Partnership (REAP), especially building on the momentum for anticipatory action stemming from the UK presidency of both G7 and COP26. The Anticipation Hub plays an important role in connecting the knowledge and experiences from practitioners implementing anticipatory action to inform such high-level dialogues and advocacy opportunities. We are excited to see that the UK has committed £120 million in new funding following the G7 Leaders Summit to support the world’s most vulnerable communities against the impacts of climate change.
We recognise the extensive support FCDO provides to Disaster Risk Financing programmes and initiatives and we welcome continued collaboration on knowledge exchange and innovation in this area. Together with the REAP Secretariat, the Anticipation Hub co-chair a sectoral community hosted by the InsuResilience Global Partnership, which is seeking to identify solutions to link risk financing and anticipatory action, and accelerate scaling up. The Anticipation Hub looks forward to advancing knowledge exchange on risk financing within the sectoral community and enhancing learning and quality assurance on this topic through support from our partners, in particular the Centre for Disaster Protection.
The Anticipation Hub is committed to facilitating knowledge brokering and strengthened connections between governments and other actors enabling anticipatory action to stimulate exchange and learning that inspires other governments and donors to embed and mainstream anticipatory action in their policies and programmes. With support from the German Federal Foreign Office, the Anticipation Hub is expanding its partnerships with government and donor partners. We look forward to bringing more donor governments on board to embrace the Anticipation Hub as a shared space to continuously interact and exchange knowledge on anticipatory action across science, policy and practice.
