Anticipatory action in Southern Africa: A new model for managing climate risk

This brochure takes a closer look at how Anticipatory Action in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) is enabling risk-informed solutions to address food insecurity that results from the extreme weather events. As the intensity and frequency of extreme weather events rise, more needs to be done to anticipate, mitigate and prevent their impact on the food security of the world’s most vulnerable people. To support this innovative approach, WFP is working with national and sub-national governments across southern Africa to strengthen and link national EWS with Anticipatory Action Plans (AAPs) and prearranged finance with the principal aim of saving lives, livelihoods, and costs from recurrent climate shocks.

The paper concludes that to make Anticipatory Action a core component of the humanitarian disaster risk management cycle a number of things need to happen:

1. Institutionalizing anticipatory action into national disaster management systems
2. Prearranged financing to support anticipatory action
3. Strengthening the evidence-base for AAPs
4. Expanding into multi-hazard anticipatory action
5. Furthering multi-actor collaboration towards scaling-up of anticipatory action in Southern Africa