Anticipatory Action Mapping & Study for DG ECHO

Background

In 2021, the European Union committed to “scale up anticipatory action in different humanitarian contexts and regions”. One year later, in 2022, G7 countries, including the European Union, committed to “significantly increase our financial support in anticipatory action programming”. And in December 2023, the European Union endorsed the “Getting Ahead of Disasters: A Charter on Finance for Managing Risks” at COP28 in Dubai and committed to “pursue a shared objective of ‘getting ahead of disasters’ through improved use of finance”.

In its effort to comply with all these commitments, DG ECHO mapped its existing investments on Anticipatory Action and developed in 2023 a roadmap to test some new approaches to fund AA.  The roadmap included the commission of a study to evaluate the work done on AA by DG ECHO that includes, as first step, a mapping and analysis of the support to Anticipatory Action and the pilots implemented by DG ECHO, considering also what other actors are doing and relevant new developments.

The second phase took the information gathered in the first part and compare it to the legal and administrative framework of DG ECHO, providing recommendations for the development of a long-term strategy within DG ECHO to scale up AA in line with the different commitments taken.

Specific objectives

• To evaluate the different tools and approaches that DG ECHO has been using to fund Anticipatory Action and determine which ones should be scaled up or mainstreamed.
• Map the tools that other donors (in the humanitarian but also in the development, peace and climate sectors) have been using to fund Anticipatory Action.
• Analyse DG ECHO’s legal and administrative frameworks in relation with the different tools identified during the first part of this study, both those piloted by DG ECHO and those used by other donors.
• Provide recommendations on how DG ECHO could scale up its support to Anticipatory Action, in line with the different commitments taken in this regard by the European Union and within the existing legal and administrative framework, including the feasibility of developing a possible specific tool to finance the “fuel” component of AA.