 transformative pathway to sustainably address food crisis. A commitment that grows continuously since jointly launching the global network against food crisis in 2016. I'm also very happy to see the considerable interest this virtual event has raised. We have with us participants from permanent representations, the EU, UN sister agencies, as well as representatives from the private sector and civil society. 2021 has seen a particular momentum for anticipatory action on the international political agenda. Last month, a high level event to advance anticipatory action and galvanize a collective push to act ahead of crisis was co-chaired by Germany, the UK and the United Nations in New York. Anticipatory action also featured prominently in the discussions leading to the UN Food Systems Summit. In the framework of action track five, to build resilience to vulnerabilities, shocks and stress, it was strongly highlighted that early warning systems and anticipatory action play a key role in monitoring and predicting multiple risk of disasters, crisis and conflicts. Protecting people from the impact of disasters rather than wait for the worst to happen is the guiding principle of anticipatory action that more and more agencies and governments around the world are now adopting. According to recent analysis, at least half of all humanitarian crises are foreseeable and 20% of them are highly predictable. Empirical evidence built over the past years shows that for every one US dollar FAO invested in anticipatory action, vulnerable households have a return on investment ranging from two and a half to 7.1 US dollars in avoided losses and added benefits. This high level Brussels dialogue is an opportunity to share knowledge and to better understand the role that anticipatory action can play in preventing food crisis, protecting livelihoods and saving lives. Before giving the floor to our moderator, my dear colleague Dominique Birgen, the director of the FAO liaison office in Geneva, I would like to invite you to watch this introductory video that was produced by the anticipatory hub. I thank you. Extreme weather events are causing destruction more frequently and severely than ever before. Storms, floods, heatwaves, diseases and other types of hazards affect millions of people every year. Crisis around the world are intersecting and compounding each other, increasing the risk of conflict, displacement and hunger. The poorest and most vulnerable are hit hardest, adding to record levels of humanitarian needs in decades. By forecasting when hazards will strike, analyzing their risks, agreeing on actions and enabling financing ahead of time, humanitarian organizations and communities can act before disasters hit. This way, anticipatory action saves lives and livelihoods and ultimately preserves people's self-sufficiency. It's a faster, more efficient and more dignified way to protect people against predictable crisis. We want to shift the humanitarian system to be more proactive instead of reactive. But for anticipatory action to reach more people, cover more locations, address more types of hazards and create lasting impacts in the lives of the most vulnerable. More can and must be done. But what will it take? First, when a crisis is imminent, every second counts. Because of that, we have to invest in early warning and readiness to anticipate especially at the local level. Second, fast help also requires fast and prearranged funding. That is why we need to expand flexible, predictable and coordinated financing. Third, different events in the world increase the risk of disasters. This reality holds for the application of anticipatory action to a wider range of hazards. Fourth, we must find the appropriate solutions for each challenge. This is only possible through exchange, collective learning, coordination and partnerships all around the world. Fifth, for anticipatory action to become business as usual, it must become an integral part of national disaster management systems. These recommendations reflect our years of experience in more than 60 countries as the anticipatory action task force. We are formed by five organizations, IFRC, FAO, WFP, Ocha and Start Network. Collectively, we have put our resources and expertise into anticipatory action to save lives and livelihoods. The anticipatory action task force promotes a wider reach of anticipatory action, provides technical support, helps build evidence and strengthen synergies with global initiatives to support countries. Together, we are calling on communities, organizations and governments to join us so more people can benefit from anticipatory action. Let's make humanitarian assistance faster, more efficient and dignified by acting early on predictable crisis. Welcome, Excellencies, distinguished guests, colleagues, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Dominique Burgeon. I am the director of the FAO, liaison office with the UN in Geneva and the officer-in-charge of the FAO of Emergencies and Resilience. And I will be your moderator during today's event. As my colleague Rasha Rafaji said, we are facing today a complex new set of challenges, which we collectively need to address. The severity and scale of food crisis today clearly demands new kinds of solutions. The purpose of this event today is to come together and make an important contribution to these solutions. We link on the outcomes of the high-level event on anticipatory action, convened by the UN Secretary General last month, as well as the UN Food Systems Summit. We come here today to discuss the decisive shift in the way food crisis and other humanitarian crises are addressed. As was clearly stated in those events, if we are to have any hope of reversing the current hunger and humanitarian trends, the world must go ahead and get ahead of the crisis curves. Today, we want to showcase the experience of key partners at country level, examine success factors and challenges and highlight a role that anticipatory action can play in preventing food crisis, by curbing food security deterioration in countries subject to recurring food shocks. And we will provide an opportunity to express visions on how to scale up anticipatory action as key components of humanitarian and development efforts in the coming years. The high-level Brussels dialogue today is an opportunity for collective learning and exchanges. And I am delighted to have here today many distinguished speakers and panelists from partner organizations, government and intergovernmental bodies that we will have the chance to interact with. But before starting, and even if by now you are all experts in virtual meetings, allow me to share some details regarding the logistics. You are invited to update your name and organization by clicking on the dots that appear in the right-hand corner of the box where your own personal video stream appears and selecting rename. If you have any problem or technical issues, please send a message in the chat box to ask for support. There will be a Q&A session at the end of this event where there will be an opportunity to interact with panelists as well as with experts from our organizations. For that, we have enabled the Q&A feature of Zoom. Please use the Q&A module for questions, not the regular chat box. We will ensure to take into consideration as many of your questions as possible. Finally, this session is being recorded and will be available after the event. We will have a rich interaction for the next two hour and a half, so I would say fast on your seat belt. The first part of our event will give the floor to our high-level speakers. We'll be sharing their perspective and contribution of their respective organization in moving towards preventative approaches to humanitarian disasters and in particular food crises. The second part of our event will give us the opportunity to learn from experience of key partners. First of all, our six representatives from different countries will be presenting their experience at field level to give us an overview of contexts where anti-pattern reaction approaches are applied. Then we will engage with our panelists to discuss lessons learned, main challenges and key success factors. This technical session will then be followed by the Q&A session and some key takeaways. So let me now introduce our distinguished speakers today. Today we have very pleased to have with us Dr. Chu Dongyu, Director General of the Food and Agriculture Organization, Mr. Janesh Lenarchic, European Commissioner for Crisis Management and Mr. David Beasley, Executive Director of the World Food Program. Dr. Stanislas Rashan, Acting Minister for Development Cooperation and State Secretary at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Slovenia and Mr. Martin Griffith and the Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinators are not able to join us this morning but will deliver their messages through video recording. Then, now friends and colleagues, it is my distinct pleasure to invite Dr. Chu Dongyu, Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization to speak. Director-General, you have the floor. Thank you, Dr. Benek. Dear colleagues and friends, and the especially greatest from Roman to my friend, Janesh, the European Commissioner and David Beasley as my old friend, then we are all assembled to have the people who need the most. Dear colleagues and friends, I'm so happy to have almost 300 participants now. So it's well-organized. Congelate the first event organized by Russia together with Dominic after you are sitting in the new office. We live in one world full of numbers but there are certain numbers that must stand out and demand our attention because this number of the people, real people in behind. The SOFIA 2021 report confirmed that up to 811 million people in the world fast hunger in 2020, more than 3 billion people cannot afford a health tax. 41 million people who are at risk of falling to the farming or farming lack of conditions. The situation is daunting. Low productivity, climate crisis, COVID-19 pandemic and conflict are among the major reasons. This trend has shown us that our traditional reactive approach no longer fit our new reality. All organizations are working harder than ever and our donors have been more generous than ever. Yet we are falling short. As I said before meeting here, there will be some remember all the numbers of money, asking for feeding the speaker gap. So we should, we do differently. We need to work better. And better means more innovative, more proactive. We must be more efficient and effective. Dear colleagues, we need a transformation and we have assigned evidence that anticipatory action can be transformative. But it requires resourcing and the scale to realize that the potential. We need that the many food crisis are preventable because they are recurrently happening in natural, especially natural disasters. It's recurrently happening. Every one year or two years, they have their own, their own intervention. Every five years, they also repeat again. So we know that investing early warning system of pay is off, not just for the community but also for the government. For example, in East Africa last year, we knew that there's the locust, well, the Camel and we took an participatory action and Dominica, Lohan and other colleagues in New York and in Geneva, in Europe, in Brussels, we really make much on to ask the donors take the immediate action to support this. I really appreciate the donors from the government, from a civil society and then from other organizations. And especially, I think now, I would say appreciate the support from the European Union. The off the tangible and the concrete support to help us stop the upcoming or emerging crisis from the desert locusts. In close cooperation with the government and with the help of donors, including the European Union, we serve the farmers more than one and a half of billion dollars in losses and to their crops and livestock. I say it's the European Union invested only 10%, no, 3%, sorry, yeah, of that. So it's really a big harvest from the small investment and participatory action. And we protected food security of more than 36 million people. We needed to invest in science and innovation, include data. We need more data driving decision-making and data-driving business model. FAO is a champion of the innovation and the digital tools such as the HANI, HANI, geo special platform which is essential to the happy members to achieve the sustainable goals address the future food crisis, a bad future in which we can anticipate all the food crisis is achievable. But only if we work together and the best of science and the data, especially big data. Partnership such as the one between FAO and the European Union are critical for the collective success in the very future food crisis and transforming our ecosystem. The global network against the food crisis is an excellent illustration of how the European Union and FAO together with the key actors such as the World Food Program and others bring like-minded partners together to in fact, a real challenge change by promoting sustainable solutions to food crisis. This include a strong focus on the prevention and anticipation. We needed to make the anticipation action that established the practice in the humanitarian assistance systems. Protecting people against the growing threatened is not only the responsibility of humanitarian actors but also the development actors. We need to have the government and the communities build early warning system, early action into their strategies as a game changer solution for food insecurity. Because only they put this as part of their strategy and for long-term design and extra plan, that we can end up that the challenges in the future. So that we can protect the more people from the protected, predictable crisis. Donas needed to know the make a flexible fund. Funding is available to act on predictive data and make a prudent and fiscal science for the resources, constitution, and world. Dear colleagues, the COVID-19 pandemic has revealed that the fragility of our global aquifood systems and the need for radical transformation of this system if we are to feed 8.5 billion people by 2030. This is the core FL news venture framework 2022 to 2031 which focus on the transformation to more inclusive, efficient, resilient and sustainable aquifood systems for better production, better nutrition, a better environment, a better life for even no one behind. If a mandate is empowered to take the leadership role for the implementation of the outcomes of the recently held UN Food Service Summit. Last night, we just finished last, it is ninth anniversary committee for UN Food Service Summit and they asked FL to take the leading role for implementation of Food Service Summit outcomes to ensure that the ambitious outcome translated into agent and concrete effort to transform aquifood system in the world. Last month, at the high-level pledging event in New York, FL announced that together with our partners in construction, we will significantly increase our overall imaginative finances and this further action by 2025. That the same day, I was encouraged by the commitments which followed from the diversity of the stakeholders. Let's continue to work together and this further action needed to build a better future when no one is left behind. Thank you. Over to you, Dominic. I thank you, Mr. Director Junhal for your intervention and for indeed highlighting the transformative power of anti-pattern reaction and its criticality as we face the challenges of tomorrow in the future which were, as you said, we must ensure more resilient, inclusive, efficient and sustainable agri-food system for all and in particular for the most vulnerable. Thank you also for highlighting the commitment of FAO towards scaling up this approach and for underscoring the importance of partnership as well as of investing in innovation. I now wish to give the floor to Mr. Janusz Lenarchicz, European Commissioner for Crisis Management. Sir, the floor is yours. Thank you, Dominic. Dear colleagues, I'd like to thank the co-organizers, the FAO and WFP for supporting this event. Earlier this year, I addressed the launch of the Global Report on Food Crisis and on that occasion, we were already noting the worrying levels of hunger throughout the world. Millions of people are in need of emergency food assistance. Entire regions are at risk of famine for a variety of reasons, most easily anticipated and often preventable. The main problem remains that the food assistance needs are rising faster than the funding available, making the current aid paradigm unsustainable in the longer term. And the international community must urgently respond to this. We need to start acting on the risks of future food crisis, providing support before the worst comes and addressing the root causes of food insecurity. That's why we believe that anticipatory approach is a promising approach. We know that it saves lives and reduces humanitarian needs. It is time that we make it an integral part of the design of our food assistance programs and the delivery of our food aid. The European Union supports anticipatory approaches and preparedness in a variety of ways. For example, we have a dedicated budget line on disaster preparedness and this year we have allocated 75 million euro. Our aim is to create flexible and reliable funding structures which would be better suited for anticipatory action and famine prevention. As Dr. True mentioned, we have recently launched a new programmatic partnership with FAO. This multi-year and multi-country initiative will support anticipatory action in Southeast Asia in a first stage and will expand later to other regions. It will focus on food security, particularly in the most vulnerable areas of the region. Anticipatory action is also an important tool to address the impact of climate change. In Burundi, for instance, we are working with the World Food Program to set up an anticipatory action scheme that can be activated ahead of climatic shocks. This system is working successfully against floods and we want to make it also operational against droughts. We are also transferring capacities to the Burundi Red Cross so that it can be run locally in the near future. In Vietnam, Cambodia and the Philippines, we are supporting our partners to scale up the anticipatory action mechanisms linked to shock responsive social protection schemes. These are underpinned by an innovative use of climate risk information, helping farmers to protect their crops and livelihoods before typhoons, floods or droughts strike. In Nigeria, we are supporting the developing of early warning tools for flood and drought hazards using advanced satellite imagery. This action will also collect data about the impact of conflict on agricultural livelihoods in inaccessible areas. This is a type of information we are often missing. Again, this action foresees the creation of local capacities and eventual handover to local stakeholders. These are only some of the many projects we are supporting around the world, working hand in hand with the diversity of partners. We want to build on these projects and make anticipatory action an integral part of our humanitarian activities, both in the immediate and long term. This, of course, will require learning and cooperation between broad range of diverse actors. This is why I wish to stress that anticipatory action requires a unified nexus approach, including both development and humanitarian partners. The international community has already walked part of the way. We are not at the beginning of the learning curve. We have already gained a wealth of experience in different humanitarian settings and other disaster-prone regions. Today's event offers an important opportunity to take stock of these experiences, to reflect on the lessons learned today and on the way forward. This will help us transition from reaction to anticipation in food assistance and pave the way for the future where there is no place for hunger and malnutrition. Thank you. Thank you very much, Commissioner Lenardcic, for your intervention and for alighting the commitment of the European Union towards scaling up anticipatory action approaches to start acting on the risk of future food crises and avoid responding, I would say, solely to the needs as they occur, as well as making it an integral part of humanitarian intervention, both in immediate and long-term. Thank you also for alighting some of the key partnership initiatives with WFP, IFRC, FAO, and many others in this area, as well as the importance of a unified nexus approach, joining development and humanitarian partners towards this goal and ultimately contributing to eradicating hunger. Thank you very much, sir. And we will now be delighted to hear from Mr. David Beasley, Executive Director of the World Food Program. Mr. Beasley, the floor is yours. Dominique, it's always great to see you. Haven't seen you in a while, and hello. And Yanis, it's always good to see you and to see Dong Yong Chu, who is a man of action, who absolutely I've enjoyed working with because there's a lot of people around the world like to talk, talk, but Dong Yong Chu likes to get it done and it's great to partner with someone like that because we are in a time in world crisis right now where we need absolute action, efficiency, effectiveness, strategic planning because quite frankly, there's just not enough money to address all the needs on the humanitarian side right now. So we've got to be very strategic. It's like, as I've said before, the Titanic is in the open seas. We've got icebergs and we've got broken wine glass in the bar. You know, we need to not, while that's not good, we need to focus on the icebergs right now and with limited dollars, the leaders around the world have got to focus on the icebergs because that's where the most damage is gonna take place in terms of nations and regions and globally. We saw that, for example, in Syria where Europe particularly didn't focus on addressing the Syrian issue now. How many years later, hundreds of billions of dollars, we can support a Syrian inside Syria for about 50 cents per person versus now that same Syrian ends up in Europe, Brussels, or wherever for 50 to 100 euros per day. It's a lot cheaper to do advanced anticipatory action. I remember talking two years ago, Dr. Chu had just come into the scene and we had the desert locus literally beginning to spread. And I said very clearly, you can give FAO now $70 million or wait and give me $700 million, your choice. And so that was anticipatory action. We got ahead of it and a lot of things were achieved. And it's the same message we're talking about now because in the last few years, we've been working with FAO on anticipatory action. I've been jumping up and down, for example, in the Sahel region. And I remember, I think it was France 24, and I said, if you think Syria was a problem with about 20 million people destabilized and a few million headed your way, wait till the greater Sahel of 500 million people from the Atlantic to the Red Sea are headed your way with infiltration by extremist groups. And I said, we can't sit back and wait. We've got solutions. And so with FAO's technical expertise and our ability to reach the communities and scale up, let me just give you an example. Just in the past couple of years that we have really prepared our teams for the type anticipatory action that's going to be needed to address the fear and the factors that we're facing in the future. Because we know like last year out of 40 million people that were displaced, 30 million were from climate shocks and climate extremes. We're looking to 2050 that the number of well-being anywhere from 215, 20 million people to a billion people that will be internally and displaced because of climate shocks. And if we don't do something about it, as I tell my friends in the West especially, you're going to pay for it one way or the other because if you have famine or destabilization of nations or mass migration by necessity, it costs just like in Syria 10 to 100 to 1,000 times more. And guess what? And I tell this to taxpayers in all the countries, people don't want to leave home, but if they don't have food security in some degree of peace, they could do what any and all of us would do for our children. And so take the Sahel region, for example, in the rest of the world working with our partners. Just in the last few years, we have planted billions of trees. We have rehabilitated land that otherwise not usable because of climate extreme degradation over three million acres of land. We have built over 59,000 feeder roads. We have built over 50 or 60,000 holding ponds, small dams, we're not the big damn folks, reservoirs. Well, guess what? When we do that, we don't have to stay there long because we're then given the people, the sustainability and the resilience they need, which means it saves everybody heartache and money. And so we've got solutions out there, anticipatory action in terms of advanced financing. We just saw this in Bangladesh where we went see a cyclone coming. We worked with 220,000 people, gave them advanced financing so they can buy seeds, not seeds, but things for their livestock, buy foods in advance. It was about $4.5 million. Had we not done that, it would have cost $8 million. So anytime we can get in advance, because you know when you're having to come in after the fact when the roads are shut down, power supplies and everything, infrastructure's down, it costs you at least twice as much. But because of Yanez, because of this way of thinking, we're able to save taxpayers dollars and be more efficient and more effective out there. We're facing this in many other places like in Central America. As I've been telling the United States, you know, what we're looking at in Central America, the number of people now talking about migrating is already doubled in the past year. And I'll give you a good example. There was an article in the Washington Post that said, the United States was spending $60 million per week for 1600 sort of beds at a cost of about $3,750 per person per week for those who've migrated all the way up to the border. While that article came out, I was in Guatemala meeting with some farmers with a program with FAO and WFP for one to $2 per week that was giving them food security, sustainability, so they would not have to leave. Now, what do you think the taxpayers in any country would wanna do regardless of their liberalism or conservatism? It's the right approach. So Yanis, EU, thank you for this high-level conference and Dr. Chu is always good to be with you. We got a lot of work to do because we've got some serious issues right knocking on our door, so thank you. Thank you, David. We can play the complementary role to make the Chinese money more efficient, more effective, more sustainable. Yeah. Thank you, Director General, and thank you very much Executive Director Bisley for your intervention and for highlighting the efficiency of anti-pattern reaction in the context of the constrained humanitarian responses. And of course, it's implication for better and more sustainable long-term recovery. Thank you also for highlighting and illustrating the importance of working together to apply this approach in relation to climate shocks but also in complex emergencies and in conflict settings where needs are often greatest. And of course, illustrating the key role of the WFP in that regard. So again, thank you, Director General. Thank you, Mr. Menarchic and thank you, Mr. Bisley. As I said, even if we will not be able to have them with us today, we will be most delighted to listen to the video messages delivered by Dr. Stanislas Rashan the Acting Minister for Development Cooperation and State Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Slovenia and Mr. Martin Griffith under Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordination. We will not hear their video messages. Commissioner, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen, I would like to thank the organizers for inviting me to speak at this event and to be given an opportunity to say a few words in favor of the action that can reduce human suffering caused by humanitarian disasters, in particular, food crisis and famine. We are faced with dire humanitarian situations in different parts of the world and extreme poverty is on the rise. I recall the statement by David Bisley, World Food Program Executive Director, delivered after visiting Madagascar in June 2021 when he said that these situations were enough to bring even the most hardened humanitarian to tears. It seems that what is being done and the way the aid is provided is simply not enough. We need to be more efficient in using the resources we have at our disposal, but even more needs to change if we want to get ahead of the crisis curve. Those leading the smart reform argue that at least 20% of all humanitarian crises were foreseeable yet only 1% of all available humanitarian funds were allocated for anticipatory action. Just imagine what would happen if action were taken before the crisis, erupted or if we could at least prevent its most destructive force which sometimes takes away what has been created in generations. Imagine what it would mean to the people who suffer from food insecurity or famine and who are forced to resort to extreme hoping measures for miracle survival. Recall in these discussions at this year UN High-Level Humanitarian Event on anticipatory action in September, we can safely say that much has already been done, but our purpose now is not only to do more in humanitarian assistance, but differently, particularly in providing food aid. As leading humanitarian set on that occasion, if we can prevent crisis from becoming devastating, then we would be foolish not to do so. Firm support for and promotion of action prior to the onset of a predictable hazard is also reflected in the priorities of the TRIO Council of EU Presidency. Developing an anticipatory humanitarian system is also a boost for building collaboration across the climate and development sectors to manage risks. Water, the main cross-cutting priority for the SLA Council of Presidency is a prominent example of doing exactly this. I thank the European Commission, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, and the World Food Program for organizing this meeting and saving the political momentum to achieve genuine and measurable progress in embedding the culture of anticipatory action in the humanitarian sector and beyond. Thank you very much. Colleagues, thank you, Commissioner Lelacic, for convening this event on responding earlier, faster, and more cost-effectively to growing global food insecurity. That this event is taking place just a month after the high-level event on anticipatory action speaks of the growing commitment to the smart new way of addressing predictable crises. The European Union and your leadership is a steadfast partner in anticipatory action. I also welcome Echo's increasing engagement in anticipatory action, including through the efforts of the working group on humanitarian aid and food aid, COHAFA. Globally, 41 million people are at risk of dying from hunger in 43 countries and territories. 155 million people are acutely food insecure. We must help these people before catastrophe strikes. We need much higher levels of unamount funding for humanitarian response plans in countries at risk. We need unhindered humanitarian access to reach people in need. We must also do more to get ahead of predictable crises. We can predict food insecurity and balance. And when we see them coming, we need to take swift action. We know that an anticipatory approach to food insecurity works. In 2017, under the UN Secretary General's leadership, we acted on forecasts of four imminent famines. Donors stepped up. Nearly 70% of the funds requested were raised in just six months. We reached over 13 million people and we prevented famine. Since then, we have pioneered anticipatory action at a smaller scale. Many of you are in the forefront in heralding this exciting future in the humanitarian sector. Colleagues, at OSHA, we continue to facilitate collective anticipatory action. In 2020, we provided funding from the Central Emergency Response Fund, or CERF, the head of predictable food insecurity in Somalia due to COVID, floods, and locusts. And this led to other early financing. And together, we prevented half a million people from sliding into crisis and emergency levels of food insecurity between July 2020 and January 2021. Early this year, forecasts predicted drought in Ethiopia and Somalia. CERF invested $40 million for anticipatory action in both countries. We staved off acute hunger for thousands of vulnerable people at the peak of the conflict. We know that anticipatory action works. Now we must bring it to scale. And how do we do this? First, we must invest in early warning, especially at the local level, at the community level, to enable anticipatory action by governments and communities. Second, we need more financing for anticipatory action. And this includes financing to build anticipatory action plans. And this will enable us to deliver the assistance people need when they need it and to evaluate the impact of our work so we're accountable and can do better next time. Existing humanitarian pooled funds, including the CERF, are strategically positioned to make the most effective and efficient use of available funds. Third, we must have the courage and conviction to act early if we are to deliver to the most vulnerable people. Forecasts indicate that the next rainy season will fail in the Horn of Africa. This will be the third failed rainy season in a row. Initial projections from the March to May 2022 rains are also bleak. If these forecasts become reality, this will be the first time since 1984 that four consecutive rains fail in that region. And in 1984, more than one million people died in resulting parents and millions more were displaced. Today, we're also grappling with conflict, COVID and other stressors in the Horn of Africa. The cost of not acting now to mitigate the impact of severe drought will be tremendous. We have a choice to act now to deal with the current crisis and to break the cycle through anticipated reaction or to wait and see. The choice is very clear. I thank you. Well, I would like to thank Mr. Stanislaw Schreschan and Mr. Martin Griffith for their remarks. And I think it was very important also to hear the call for anticipated reaction in the case of the deteriorating situation in the Horn of Africa. So we'll now move to the second part of the event of today and dive straight into the technical discussion. For the first section of this, we'll give the floor to colleagues who will be presenting anticipatory action initiatives in six different countries. And it is therefore my great honor to introduce our first speaker, Mr. Texon John Lim, who is the director of the Office of Civil Defense at the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council of the Philippines. Mr. Lim, the floor is yours. Thank you, Dominic. Good morning to everyone or good evening for people in places like ours. The Philippines is ranked as the ninth most exposed in disaster-prone country in the world. Typhoon's floods and droughts have caused extensive damage to both lives and livelihoods and are only getting worse due to the intensification of climate change that led to climate disasters such as Typhoon Haiyan to which I am a survivor. We needed to change the way we manage disasters in the Philippines and have already expanded the use of our quick response fund to actually adopt more of the anticipatory action principles. Over the past five years, the Philippine government has been working with the international community to showcase a significance of anticipatory action as an option to tackle climate extremes. We have focused on coordination and streamlining our efforts as well as, of course, innovative measures. The Office of Civil Defense has the executive arm and secretariat of the Philippines National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council alongside our humanitarian partners. We're instrumental in setting up the National Technical Working Group on Anticipatory Action, a permanent committee under our council system where ideas, lessons learned, and future opportunities have grown from the strong coordination. Such ideas have led to the Typhoon surf pilot which builds on existing forecasting gains by the Philippine Red Cross and pulls together a wide variety of UN agencies, civil society, and the government to think of innovative solutions to protect lives and livelihoods. Of course, having mentioned the same, we think, of course, countries such as the EU, Germany, and Canada for supporting the same. We have focused on proof of concept. Anticipatory actions have been implemented ahead of drug events in Mindanao where empirical evidence from the FAO showed that every one US dollar spent on these interventions can reap rewards up to 4.4 US dollars. Not only is it cost effective, the approach has also shown to support resilience efforts, curb food insecurity, and provide a more dignified approach to aid. While these gains have been made, we still have much to learn about taking the approach to scale, incorporating new policies to translate, to practice, and exploring potential disaster risk financing systems. As anticipatory action continues to grow or gain momentum, we must ensure that we study, document, and share lessons learned together so that we can grow this approach. Looking at what works and being honest with what doesn't will be critical for this area's success in the long haul. Res assured that the Philippine government is committed to developing innovative measures that adopts the principles of anticipatory action and looks forward to more international cooperation relative to the same. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Mr. Lim. And it was great to hear about the partnership between the Office of Civil Defense and Humanitarian partners was indeed fundamental to advance the work and anticipatory action. Thanks also for highlighting that why significant gains have been made in the Philippines. For example, by setting up clear protocols to act ahead of droughts, there is still a need to grow and clearly define the way forward to bring anticipatory action to scale over the coming years. So again, sir, thank you very much for your intervention. And taking the opportunity of this virtual work will go 9,400 kilometers away from the Philippines and will go to Kenya. And I'm not very pleased to turn to Ms. Carla Mukavi. Mukavi, the FAO representative in Kenya will speak about FAO's initiative in the country. Dear Carla, the floor is yours. Thank you. Thank you very much, Dominique, FAO Director-General, AUU Commissioner, WFP Executive Director. All protocol observed, as we said in Kenya. Kenya has been feeling the impact of climate change as seen in increased frequencies of intensifies of drought, floods, and the recent locust invasion. Vulnerable holds hold that depend on rain-fed agriculture. They really bear the greatest impact of those instigated calamities. Therefore, acting ahead of shocks to mitigate their impact on livelihoods and food security is therefore an absolute priority for us. Accurate early warning information, clear thresholds that can really trigger anticipatory action, as well as flexible and reliable finance mechanisms, are just some of the key preconditions. FAO is currently, I would say, really supporting implementation of a number of predictive livestock early warning information systems. And those, they enable user-like national drought management authority to monitor livestock diseases and crisis conditions and to act before extreme weather events. FAO supported the IPC process in Kenya as, for instance, helped to consolidate complex security monitoring and early warning information for anticipatory actions and emergency responses program over the past years. We also supported the government for desert locust surveillance and early warning using, for instance, E locust 3M and E locust 3G. And this has really contributed to facilitate monitoring, data collection, forecasting and reporting, informing timely and effective ideal and ground control operations. The response to desert locust threat in Kenya was immediate, I should say, between January 2020 and April 2021. The DL surveillance and control together with the anticipatory livelihood protections interventions allowed for the control of over 2,200,000 hectares of land in the greater Horn of Africa and Yemen, protecting the livelihoods and food security of about 39.9 million people. The outcome value of those interventions were estimated at USD 1.7 billion. And I should say that crop and milk production were saved. For instance, about 300,000 households also received the livelihood support, preventing worsening of food security. And the COVID-19 pandemic and also to mitigate expected negative impacts of movement restrictions and market disruption on productive activities, FAO provided around 400,000 cash support to vulnerable agro-pastoralists in selected counties ahead of planting season for purchase of required farms, inputs, and services. In 2017, with the assessment reports indicating likelihood of a major drought, USD 400,000 was mobilized for FAO-Sphere Antisparter Action window. And a cost-benefit analysis of those interventions showed a return of USD 3.5 for everyone dollars spent on livestock intervention. And this ratio increased to $9 when accounting for the avoided cost of response. Just last July, I should say that FAO and the government of Kenya released a joint drought action plan calling for immediate scale-up reaction. And the launch of this plan was timely. It really occurred amounts before the release of the Kenya Long Rain Assessment Report that projected the major food security deterioration towards the end of the year. And for this to happen, I should say we really counted with the support of developing partners, working in coordination with regional and sub-regional institutions, and the engagement of different stakeholders whom we thank most sincerely, including women. And despite, I should say, all those successful examples, anticipated action implementation, still face a number of challenges in Kenya. And these include limited data availability, forecast uncertainty, limited capacities to adequately interpret those uncertainties, and the need for flexible and sufficient finance to deliver a required intervention. It is really clear that anticipated action save lives, save finance, and scarce humanitarian resources, and the release of the dignity of those who are most in need. A current forecast indicated that October, December, short rains will be inadequate, making it a bad consecutive below average rain season. And this is of a major concern as food security has historically deteriorated rapidly following a failed consecutive rain seasons. Though the window to act is rapidly narrowing, there is still time to act ahead of the peak of the crisis. Therefore, we really call upon development partners to support the implementation of immediate actions to anticipate a deepening of food security crisis. By investing now, we will safeguard ongoing resilience efforts and gains made during the past years. Those types of actions embedded in the long-term resilience programming are critical to protect our people and their livelihoods. I thank you very much. Thank you very much, Carla, for your presentation. I would say the variety of shocks you have to deal with and how anti-pattern reaction is relevant in this context. And among the variety of shocks and communities you are supporting, I think I would like to really support your call for more support for pastoralist communities that are indeed often neglected. And we know that when they lose their life, it is very difficult for them to get back. You also highlighted some of the common challenge for anti-pattern reaction implementation at scale. And I think this is indeed very important. So thank you very much, Carla. And now following the clinical example, it is my pleasure to turn to Mr. Pete Vokton, the Deputy Country Director for Programming and Strategy at WFP Bangladesh. Pete, the floor is yours. Thank you very much. Let me try to give you a quick overview of the WFP experience with anti-pattern reactions in Bangladesh, which is a country that has three major rivers drained through it. And while at normal times the country has 87% of its land area covered by water bodies, during floods like the ones we had last year, more than one third of the country can be covered by water. And the prospects for increasing climate change are really daunting. So following the onset of the government's seven, five-year plans in 2017, WFP introduced anti-pattern reactions in particular than forecast-based financing into its resilience work. After some preparations when floods hit in 2019, we successfully were able to release some forecast-based cash food assistance to 6,000 households. The following year, with additional support from SERV, we managed to reach together with other partners around 30,000 households. Now, the impact of climate change in Bangladesh goes way beyond only riverine floods. So in 2020, ECHO supported us to look into an anticipatory action for the more complex monthly hazard context that we face in the southern part of the country where there are not only floods, but all households also are affected by cyclones, flash floods, mudslides, tidal surges. These are events which are intrinsically more hard to predict and thus need further understanding to really take them forward. Nevertheless, this year, we had our first release of cash with ECHO support in response to anticipatory anticipated flash flooding in the south, in the area close to where the refugees are harbored. When I look at what makes anticipatory action work in Bangladesh, it is very important to mention the role of our government partners. They are open to new initiatives. They acknowledge that more is needed if the country wants to successfully deal with the challenge that comes with climate change. Ministry of disaster management and relief, therefore, has taken on itself to lead the forecast-based financing task force, which has been instrumental in harmonizing anticipatory action triggers for different disasters, resolving operational barriers, et cetera. We also have a number of very capable technical agencies whose capacity we further strengthen so that they can establish trigger levels and better predict floods and other types of disaster. When I look at the future prospects for anticipatory action, one of the beauties of the system is that it requires you to pre-identify vulnerable households to understand their vulnerability. And this then not only allows anticipatory action responding just before a disaster, it's also early response action immediately after a disaster. So in 2021, this year, when we got surfunding, five agencies sat together and agreed to establish a joint database, identifying more than 100,000 vulnerable households, identifying their vulnerabilities, their characteristics. And while we didn't have any floods, luckily of such a magnitude that there had to be anticipatory action, but one of the agencies managed to get some additional funding and used the database to actually then immediately target those vulnerable households. This is why WFP is now setting up a study to better understand and also provide evidence to our government from the parts of how anticipatory actions, early actions, help to preserve food security of vulnerable households relative to the more traditional way of responding wherein our assistance might reach those households weeks at times more than a few months after the actual event. We also want to explore how to involve the private sector into anticipatory action. You already have some experience involving local shops in an urban response to COVID using blockchain technology, using a technology actually that originally came from within the refugee camps. And when next year we'll have another response, we want to set up and incorporate small pilot to link local shops to this anticipatory action response. Last, but probably the most important is we want to explore how we can better integrate the use of anticipatory actions into the social safety nets of the government. Anticipatory actions can be an important tool to make those safety nets more adaptive and just help the government to manage the impact of climate change to the country. Thank you very much and back to you. Well, thank you so much Pete for indeed reminding us of the context where you work and the particularly dynamic impact of climate change in a country like Bangladesh in terms of climate extremes. Thank you also for highlighting the work you do in partnership and working with the role of the government of Bangladesh, not only as in the neighbor but really as the driver of these anticipatory action efforts and the role we have as a community in providing evidence for decision making and also in promoting innovation. You refer to several innovation including blockchains and others. So thank you very much Pete for your presentation today and again in this virtual world we are moving back from Asia to Africa and we go to Senegal where we will hear from Mr. Alhaji Abubakar Kende, Secretary General of the Nigerian Red Cross. Kende, you have the floor. Yes, thank you very much Dominique, our moderator. Permit me to stand on this important call I want to register our appreciation to the Director General FAO and his team, EU Commissioner, the WPED and his team and also the representative of the International Federation of Red Cross and X-Scieties in attendance. I want to share the experience from Nigerian Red Cross Society on the hunger crisis intervention in 2021. As it was previously mentioned and as you may be aware, Nigeria is already having challenges with all insurgency, particularly in the northeastern part of the country where the society continue to reach 800,000 people with food and other assistance such as seeds, tools and essential household items. The recent crisis actually been anticipated in the northeastern and the north central Nigeria identifies 2.53 million people at risk of food insecurity between June to August this year due to combined impact of widespread of high levels of conflict, impact of COVID-19 pandemic and income earning opportunities and continued displacement of populations. There is higher insecurity, particularly related to boundary three activity in this part of the country. The action triggers that and this action that we already have seen in this area triggers available in early warning reports from the region. We have also conducted need assessment to build in early warning to identify pocket under crisis, identify the target populations and their emerging needs. We are undertaking advocacy for growing crisis and use of emergency appeal to highlight the needs of the people. This will be jointly with the support of the International Federation of Recreation and Health Society. Already in the critical affected sub-instit we have seen and observed insufficient food probably about 94% of the key informant interviews that were conducted. Actually said that is insufficient food and then it is very clear the issue of severe acute nutrition among children between six to 59 months. We have 37% and then they are already existing about 200,000 IDPs in three states of Casino, Zamfara and Sokto Sea. The emergency appeal objectives actually was put jointly with the International Federation has three key objectives. One is support the elimination of nutrition in the Northwest and North Central region through provision of healthy feeding practice. It is also intended to provide watch services in the affected communities. Then the third objective is support the engagement of farmers through Steve's stock, access to land and cash transfers. Reaction and intervention actions. Precisely nutrition is one of the common kind of conditions that have been assessed in these regions. We had a plan to educate the communities, members on health seeking behavior, particularly the related to nutrition. And then we also intended support psychosocial support so that people can be able to withstand the hardship and the shock that is being caused by the prevailing situation. We had also observed the issue of livelihood protection, which is also very critical in this area, provides seeds and a schedule of multi-purpose cash distribution. Also to support health interventions, provide adequate access to healthcare. We also had a plan to support the National Society capacity building, particularly training of volunteers. The volunteers are community-based and any support given to volunteers in terms of training capacity building to conduct ideas was actually strengthened in the community of New Zealand. Lessons from this, we can see that the data and triggers, far-show sponsored crisis are now identifiable. Early warning, however, the material funding for early action is still very much to be desired. A difficult operational environment, we have low security areas in these areas, which are often investment in capacity building for strengthening the humanitarian pipeline. The ring-fencing financing of the humanitarian interventions, not as what we have seen in the Northeast, can actually overlook this just next to the door, with equal or more humanitarian imperative. So, in theory, action actually is very clear and very important for us to be able to mitigate and assist people in terms of preparedness. And New Zealand Society is actually calling for partnership on preventing the food crisis and carbon-free food insecurity generation from the core structures in Nigeria using the regulatory actions. Thank you very much. Well, listen. Thank you very much, Mr. Kende, for indeed highlighting the situation you are facing, the specific vulnerabilities, but also, of course, the difficult operational environment in which you have to deliver and for highlighting the diversity of the response provided, also for reminding us of the critical role of the volunteers. And each time, I think we have to pay tribute to the red-cost volunteers that are operating because of work. So thank you very much, Mr. Kende. So we remain in Africa now, and next we indeed are going to go to Senegal, where we are delighted to have with us Mr. Amadou Diallo, Country and Regional Coordinator for Crisis Anticipation and Risk Financing for the Start Network. Mr. Diallo, the floor is yours. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. It's a pleasure and an honor to be with you today. I'm going to present a summary of the ArcReplica initiative in Senegal and share with you how at the Start Network we were able to successfully lead an early action response to drought that was carried out in the context of COVID-19, which exacerbated populations' vulnerability in Senegal. So basically, this is a practical illustration of how innovative risk financing mechanisms can be leveraged to improve our resilience to risks and shocks under extreme and complex contexts, just to give you some background. In November 2019, following a rainfall deficit, the African risk capacity mechanism triggered, leading to a payout of around 10.6 million US dollar to the Start Network and around 13 million US dollar to the government of Senegal. Around 960,000 people were exposed to the drought risk if no action was undertaken. And this payout allowed to assist vulnerable people through an early response intervention. This insurance payout from African risk capacity is the largest funding allocation ever to civil society for early protective actions to support communities threatened by crisis. This is very different to normal models of fundraising, which require a situation such as drought to escalate into a devastating crisis like famine before funds and action can be mobilized. It allowed us to assist around 355,000 people with at least 50% of women in seven regions. And despite the COVID-19 situation, our teams were able to pursue field activities at a critical time due to a great extent to the preparation we've had and activities took place at the moment where population needed it the most. This assistance was supposed to bring support to reduce the impact of drought and avoid negative coping strategies throughout the lean season. The data we collected during independent monitoring suggests that cash and flower distributions increased household dietary diversity and decreased reliance on negative coping strategies like skipping meals, selling palliative assets, et cetera. And this was during the period June to August 2020. The average household dietary diversity score reported by independent monitoring respondents increased also by 11% in the same period. And this is particularly impressive given that we would typically expect HDDS to decrease as the lean season went on. Accept the intervention of the government in Senegal in 2020. The start network early humanitarian response was the largest early action program run in Senegal. And this greatly supported vulnerable communities to manage a difficult lean season who would have been an unprecedented situation due to COVID-19 impact. Looking at the diversity of stakeholders in this initiative, it's important that we work together on disastrous financing systems so that these systems aren't developing isolation from each other. Potentially reinforcing traditional silos of government, United Nations, civil society, or other. All stakeholders should come together to coordinate contingency plans backed by pre-arranged finance and can share data and risk analysis information. Finally, climate change is not a curse or a fatality. It is a phenomenon that can be scientifically understood, monitored, and through early action we can mitigate its impact and prevent one risk to exacerbate other risks which would threaten livelihoods, peace, security, and development goals. Thank you. Thank you very much for your point, Mr. Diallo. And for highlighting the interesting example of the insurance payout via the Africa risk capacity for early preventive action. I'm not waiting for the drug rescaling which is indeed a very relevant and new model of insurance mechanism. And for highlighting, of course, the positive impact on household food security and in reminding us, of course, of the importance of the very good monitoring and evaluation system for making a strong point on the importance of partnership, avoid building silos, and for ending by reminding us that climate change is not a fatality and that we can act on it. So thank you very much, Mr. Diallo, and Merci beaucoup. For our last field example, I wish to invite Ms. Randa Merigani, the head of the Humanitarian Financing Unit and Manager of the Somalia Humanitarian Fund at the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Ocha in Somalia. Ms. Merigani, over to you, please. Thank you, Dominique. And good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, everyone. Greetings from Mogadishu. I'd just like to start with just talking about Somalia itself. I know the emergency relief coordinator, Mr. Martin Griffiths, just spoke about Somalia briefly in his speech, but I would like to just add a little bit more detail because it's been a unique experience for Somalia and for anti-fat reaction in general. Now Somalia, similar to many countries in the region, it's been massively impacted by climate change. Just to give some perspective, in the last three decades alone, Somalia has oscillated between 13 droughts and 19 floods, which basically shows that it's a climate change-driven crisis and anti-fat reaction becomes all the more critical in the way that we do our business here in Somalia. So under the leadership of the Undersecretary General and the CERF advisory group, there was basically an initiative to explore anti-fat reaction use of funding to complement the CERF humanitarian response. So this resulted in the design and implementation of the first anti-fat reaction pilot that provided a multi-agency and multi-sector coordinated response for Somalia. That first pilot was launched last year through the Ocha Managed Pool Fund, the CERF, and then it was followed by another one early this year because of the drought conditions in Somalia. Between these two pilots, we have basically allocated 35 million for anti-fat reaction to the different UN agencies funds and programs in the space of less than 12 months for basically ensuring that we can do early action. Now, these pilots are unique in basically the size of the allocation that it was the number of UN agencies that were involved in the multi-sectoral response and of course the role of the NGOs as implementing partners through the UN agencies in this overall response. Now, there's been an evaluation that has been done for this pilot and there's been a lot of learning that has come out of it, but I will attempt to summarize the key learning that we've had so far and we still continue to develop as we implement and we have an ongoing pilot right now into three key points. First and foremost is the results. So what we've seen is that the right activity delivered by the best position actors at the right time have shown us positive results and outcomes. However, the key to ensuring this is to have the pre-agreement and to have the right stakeholders around the table, but also and very important is to have the community to be part of this conversation and preparing. Now, just to touch on a few of the results and I think some of my colleagues have mentioned this and I will just touch on a few of them is basically the early responses that allowed our beneficiaries to reduce and stabilize the food consumption gaps that they have. We've protected local simplifications has been quite widespread within the region. Hundreds of thousands, the attempts of thousands of hectares were basically protected through and spatula action through our partners there. We created a safe environment for children that are very vulnerable in the setting in which we operate. And basically we managed to foster a coordination which was really important in institutionalizing that not only between the humanitarian partners on the ground but also between the government as a key counterpart and player in providing humanitarian response and early action. Now cash transfers is one of the things that has also made a great difference and I think it has also been mentioned by some of our colleagues. Now, what are the things that we've learned within the framework? So a framework had been planned and put together a year before the response was put together. But one of the things that we've seen is very, very key and important is to have the right triggers because the trigger is what basically starts the response. So we need to ensure that there is a collective agreement that basically we are all the different stakeholders and when you bring together different agencies with different specializations, we need to make sure that there's consensus that we are basically using the right triggers for that. In addition to that, what are the actual interventions that we need to put together? If we're doing a multi-sectoral, multi-agency response, then we need to make sure that we are actually picking the right interventions and that is some of the learning that we've seen that we need to maybe tweak a little bit what interventions and what is the timing of the interventions across different clusters. And of course last but not least is the funding and the funding levels which really plays an impact in terms of the response because drought for example in Somalia has been pervasive in so many different parts and so the funding level really impacts on how well and how much we can respond, whether it's localized, whether it's a little bit more cross-regional. Second of all is basically that it was without a multi-stakeholder participation, buy-in and effort, we would not have been able to implement successfully the Antspat reaction pilot. Now one of the things that was also very important is that you may have the plan, you may have everything set on the ground but once you trigger it and the funding becomes available, we need to have clear communication amongst the different stakeholders. And that means basically emphasizing what is the commitment of the involved partners, how are we going to manage the expectations of the different stakeholders and what is the operational readiness at the time that we need to deliver these particular activities or interventions on the ground. Last but not least is integration. So also what we've seen is that the Antspat reaction framework or the plan that was developed particularly for Somalia it needs to be integrated into the existing humanitarian processes and response plans, such as for example, the humanitarian response plan that is put together every year that provides an overall framework for the country and there's also an emergency response plan that operationalizes this response. So they need to be part of these frameworks and that will help to ensure predictability as well as sustainability. And that basically means that we've managed to institutionalize it into the existing systems. Having said that, since we are still in a pilot phase what we've been doing is we are, as we speak now, updating these frameworks agreeing on the triggers on the interventions and which partners who does what when and that basically is to take the learning that we've had to the next level to make sure that it becomes a more consistent more integrated streamlined process. And so what we've seen just to wrap up is that maintaining the integrity of the Antspat reaction framework during the design process has proved to be one thing but then managing it during the implementation it takes another level of thoughtfulness and intentionality around some very difficult decisions sometimes. So in short, what we've seen is that Antspat reaction is very much the future of the humanitarian response but we need to plan better and we need to work very well as a team to be made sure that we're getting it right. Thank you. Thank you very much, Miss Mergani for highlighting indeed the critical role of the surf and the interagency of the Antspat reaction pilots in Somalia what you have learned from their three keywords, results, multi-stakeholder integration, also underlining the importance of clear grid plans which is indeed very important in the context and for finishing by saying that Antspat reaction is definitely part of the future of human interaction. So this concludes this second part of our event today and I would like to really thank all our distinguished colleagues for sharing their experience from different parts of the world and providing these extremely valuable examples. We are now ready to head to the next section of this event, the panel discussion and we have the pleasure to have with us today some panelists from different organizations that will help us better understand the challenge and key success factors in implementing Antspat reaction. Then let me welcome and introduce the member of our panel today. We have with us Miss Andrea Culeyma, Director of DGECO Directorate for Sub-Saharan Africa Asia Latin American Pacific at the EU. Mr. Leonhard Mitzi, Head of Unit DGE Interpar Sustainable Agri-Food Systems Units. Mr. Abdi Jama, Coordinator of Food Security, Nutrition and Resilience at IGAL. Mr. Rainne Paulsen, the Director of the Office of Emergencies and Resilience at FAO. Mr. Brian Lander, the Deputy Director of Emergencies at WFP. Mr. Boupin Tomar, the Head of Country Cluster Delegation for West Africa. And Emily Montier, the Head of Crisis Anticipation and Risk Financing for the START Network. So now moving to Miss Andrea Culeyma. Thank you for joining us today. And let me start with you. The EU Communication on Humanitarian Action places a strong focus on anti-pattern reaction as a means to strengthen resilience. Can you tell us how is DGECO implementing this commitment and facilitating the scale up of anti-pattern reaction? And before you start, I would like to ask you, Chris and the other speaker to try to stick to the five minutes slot as we are already running a bit late. So thank you. Miss Culeyma, the floor is yours. Thank you, Dominique. I'll just have a check. Can you hear me? Very well. Okay, perfect. I will try to stick to the five minutes. First let me start by saying that the communication is a commission-wide document. So this commitment is not taken by just DGECO, but the whole commission as a whole. And furthermore, the Council, the EU Member States have supported in their conclusions the work on anti-pattern reaction and called for its expansion in a humanitarian development piece nexus, which is something that the next speaker from the commission will also elaborate on. The commissioner outlined earlier this morning what we do. So let me just elaborate and explain a few aspects. First and foremost, our experience shows that both anti-civatory action and early response are effective to safeguard food security. For example, preliminary results from the evaluation of an action in Bangladesh in 2020 show that there was a reduction of 32% in requests for loan post-flood amongst beneficiaries because the cash grants which were provided ahead of the floods help beneficiaries address their basic needs during the floods and help them repair their house and pay for livestock treatment after the flood. So in a way, it's really a non-brainer that that anti-civatory action makes sense. It's important, however, to be able to document that. The EU has committed to promote anti-civatory action as part of our strategy on emergency preparedness. And this is not a new commitment, but one where the humanitarian aid communication and the reception it got motivates us to build on and expand further. We have a dedicated budget line, emergency preparedness budget which Commissioner Lenarchic referred to with an annual budget of approximately 75 million euros. And the first of the priorities of this budget line for 2020-2024 is risk and anti-civatory action. Whereas the other priorities are complementary to that. And I was very pleased to hear earlier on the experience in Philippines in adopting anti-civatory action strategies which builds amongst others on two eco-funded disaster preparedness projects. The MoveUp, moving urban poor towards resilience and SUPA support to urban preparedness through preemptive action. And these two projects have been instrumental in working with local government units on contingency planning and other capacity building activities. We are also progressively mainstreaming anti-civatory action in our humanitarian response projects when this is possible and relevant. We have made significant progress but I can tell you Dominique more can be done. An example is our support complemented by development funding to the Locust Response in East Africa with FAO. This is a key area where the humanitarian community needs to progress in terms of documentation as well as communication of the effects of early and anti-civatory action. So it can then help in the mobilization of funds among competing priorities. One commitment that Echo is taking following the communication is that we want to keep learning. Anti-civatory action has demonstrated its effectiveness for climate shocks but we need further piloting and complex emergencies to address compound and multiple shocks. For example, conflicts, urban settings, situations of displacement and the EU is also promoting pilots in those scenarios. Anti-civatory action needs flexible and stable funding. So we are also developing new financing modalities adapted to these needs. Commissioner Renanaches referred to the programmatic partnership that we just concluded with FAO, which is a multi-year multi-country and which has a focus on anti-civatory action for food security. That context that may refer again to the importance of local action, which is key in anti-civatory action. After more than a decade of support to DREF, the IFRC Disaster Relief Fund for local response, we have now expanded the support to include forecast-based action as part of the local response that this entailed and we're in discussion with IFRC for pilot programmatic partnership as well on strengthening the capacities of local red-core societies to do indeed that immediate and early response to disasters, including food-related disasters. We are conscious that anti-civatory action implies working with a variety of partners, including local development and peace actors, i.e. having this next approach. And in relation to that, we see an opportunity to establish a more robust link between anti-civatory action and social protection as an aid delivery mechanism. This would entail strengthening social protection systems by making them shock-responsive, i.e. adapting them in advance of crisis so they are reactive and able to provide a timely assistance to those in need when the disaster actually strikes. To wrap up, a meeting like this one is a great opportunity to capitalize on our own experience with a view to scale up. The first step is creating a body of knowledge through guidelines, good practices, trainings. Then of course, the challenge is to roll this up to disseminate internally and externally and progressively incorporate anti-civatory action and resilience building into the operational culture across the aid community, both the humanitarian aid community but also the development one. Thank you, Dominique. Thank you very much, Andrea, for clearly indicating all eco-turns political commitment into action, I think, and with increased resources and others in knowledge and innovations. Thank you very much, Andrea. Changing directorate general, which remaining at the EU level, I would like to ask Mr. Leonhard Mitzi and ask him, Leonhard, following what Andrea said, could you please expand on connections and synergies between development programs and anti-battery action schemes implemented by humanitarian actors? Leonhard, the floor is yours. Thank you, Dominique. And thanks to all colleagues and first of all, thanks to colleagues in ECO at FAO and WFP. I just want to take a proposal of Pete from Bangladesh earlier on. I think today's event is an important event coming just after the UN Food Systems Summit and midway into the Copping Glasgow to have a bit of a systems approach, thinking of a compilation of what all the partners, humanitarian development, the peace, nexus, conflict resolution can do together under anti-battery action. It's not going to be easy because this is again, systems thinking. Systems thinking around risk management, risk management tools, products like insurance, finance, innovative finance. We didn't speak much about innovative finance, but this is also going to be critical in times of typology of finance, bonds, do they work, do they don't work? I saw also discussions in the comments around gender mainstreaming, how gender sensitive are we in terms of antiseptic reaction, in terms of biases or not, digital, AI and blockchains were mentioned, is this all high, is this fluff, or is there true potential geospatial data? So I think a compendium, maybe all the partners can sit together in terms of what's working at country level, at regional level, at global level, what's scalable and what's not scalable and what are the financing gaps. If today's meeting can trigger this compendium of a wealth of information, of success stories, of maybe of stories that can maybe reach scale, I think this could also be an opportunity for finance, for private sector operators, for NGOs to actually take home a delivery product from this event. I will not mention the figures that were mentioned by the high level panelists, which stemmed from the global report on food crisis. I just need to reiterate what many of you said, we clearly need to address the root causes of today's food crisis, conflicts, economic shocks, climate change, and clearly the COVID pandemic. We are maybe a bit out of it in Europe, but we are still not totally out of it from a global context. And the situation is not looking good in a number of hotspots across the globe. This clearly requires, and this was a conclusion in the UN Secretary General Chair Summary, a transformation of global and local agri-food systems to be more inclusive, more resilient, more sustainable. And we as European Union have the EU green deal and the farm-to-fork strategy as our guiding lights in terms of our rollout. I would like in practical terms to mention three building blocks of where I see a systemic approach to fighting food crisis. First of all, my first building block is to support a transition towards agri-food systems that are economically, environmentally, and socially sustainable, which means achieving food and nutrition security and resilience to crisis. We are doing, as you know, a number of rapid agri-food systems analysis across basically the globe. One of the concrete examples, and this was mentioned from Senegal, is our support to the African risk capacity. We invested five million euros in collaboration with ARC and WFP in an ongoing project that aims to understand the links between climate-related disasters and response to food crisis. Here, the objective is to strengthen ARC's delivery model, especially capacity building in disaster risk management of the African Union member states in the production and improved countries' profiling and improved contingency planning, taking into account both emergency humanitarian actions and longer-term post-crisis development actions to build community and household resilience. Second support similar is the one to local, regional, and global information systems on food insecurity. Since 2016, INPA engaged the global network in the production of timely, reliable, and consensus-based information on food crisis and food insecurity, we have now today with us a reference methodology, the IPC and Comparable Quadro-Armonizia Regional Platforms West, East, Southern Africa, and Central America as a global public good, which is the global report on food crisis and its updates. The FAO and WFP early warnings on acute food insecurity hunger hotspots, the report to the members of the UN Security Council on food insecurity in countries with conflict situation and other initiatives are clearly building blocks, which are triggered by the information which is updated systematically from the global report. All of these ensure preventive, early, and evidence-based responsive food crisis. A third, a second building block is multilateralism. We have as a commission a multilateralism communication and besides what we said earlier on in terms of the coordination hub and the role of the coordination hub, Rome-based and beyond from the UN Food Systems Summit, we would like that events such as the nutrition for growth in Tokyo, the COP in Glasgow, Kunming this month are actually communicating to each other. We speak a lot of silos, but sometimes the systems thinking across events, it's as if environmental ministers go to COP and we forget what happened in New York or humanitarian actors speak, which is not linked maybe to all the systems thinking, including what will happen in the events ahead. We will have the EU Africa Summit. All these events should not just be summits, should not be just what we call summaries of big maybe pledging, but also systems transformation at counter-level. This is going to be key. And this is a building block that the European Union is close to hard, the multilateral dimension. Amongst the actions and initiatives at EU level that I just would like to quote are the council conclusions on the EU priorities for the UN Food Systems Summit, which was at the base of our positioning in New York is the preparedness for food crisis. And once again, how to operationalize better the global network at all levels, at local, regional and global. Last but not least is better closer collaboration and coordination across the UN agencies and fora. Third point is to deliver on effective humanitarian development and peace nexus using the global network against food crisis and supporting the fighting food crisis, humanitarian development peace nexus coalition that has emerged amongst one of the coalitions of the UN Food Systems Summit. In the coming weeks, we will hold discussions with our partners of the global network on the use of around 20 million euros for the next years to continue building an effective humanitarian development peace nexus to fight food crisis at the different levels. Over to you Dominic. Thank you very much, Leona, for your very rich intervention for reminding us of the importance you need for system approach and the role of tools such as the global network in food crisis can play in that. I also retain your very clear call for knowledge generation, compilation of knowledge as a clear concrete outcome of this particular meeting. Thank you very much, Leona. And I now move to Mr. Adidjana, the coordinator for security, nutrition and resilience of IGAR. And I would like to ask Mr. Adidjana what capacities exist in your region to implement anti-factory action, including coordination mechanism and what challenges obstacles to prevent development from implementing them more broadly. Could you share any promising example from your region? Mr. Adidjana, go to the floor. Yes, thank you. Thank you very much, Dominic. Good morning, good afternoon. Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen. I think you mentioned coordination. So I will focus on coordination. I will focus on the regional food security and nutrition working group for East Africa, for Southern Africa. It's a platform that we share with FAO. It also involves other UN agencies, few SNAP member states, whole host of partners in the region. It is supposed to be a one-stop shop for information early warning in the region. It's because of this that from the IGAR side we have recently incorporated and included the FSNWUG, the Resilience Analysis Unit, the IPC. This is now represented in the IGAR food security nutrition and resilience analysis hub in based at IGAR Climate Center in Nairobi. Its role is to collate information from agencies and from member states and present a regional interview by country by thematic areas. We have seven or so subgroups from food security, nutrition, displacement, markets, livestock, and bus total issues. Our main objective is to raise the food crisis issue of food and advocate for participatory action. Some of the products we produce are monthly reports. We have a monthly meeting and in these monthly meetings we provide a summary of the food security and nutrition situation in the region and by country. We also provide snapshots when there are certain issues that we want to zoom in. We provide snapshots and we produce these snapshots. We also produce alerts when sometimes, for example, there's the low rainfall whether in East Africa, we provide in collaboration with FAO and other agencies, we provide alerts on these things. And more recently, we produce regional focus of the global report on food crisis. We zoom into our region and we have a separate report in addition to the world global one. We work with FSIN, Food Security Information Network and the UN and other partners that I also based in East Africa. So instead of taking the information from the global food crisis, we contribute to the food crisis and we produce our own report. So we launched very recently our regional focus either regional focus on food crisis, but most importantly, in addition to these early warning things, we also have, when there is an issue or there's a problem of food crisis in parts of the region, we provide, we press releases and send it to different parts of the media through our communications. A case, we also, for example, for the National Logos, we have press conferences. We together with FAO and ELCO in the region, we organize press conferences. And I think some of the challenges that are in the region the same with other issues. One of the issues is there's sometimes too much information and not actionable, particularly the issue of conflict information. Even though at EGAD, we have a conflict early warning network to get an update on food or conflict on displacement or food security situation. It's not easy. We also, most of the information in the region are project-based. I think that FAO and EG talked about mainstreaming these early action and anticipatory action on an early warning on in the national strategies of the member states. Most of these things, unfortunately, they are based on projects and they have a common goal along with the project. And so the one example I can give in our region is the issue of the National Logos. I think for the most part, we haven't seen this level of National Logos invasion for a very long time. We have press conferences. We have press releases on this, not necessarily doing the action and the response ourselves, but providing platform for mobilizing the member states to come together and to share lessons. We have, I think the issue of National Logos is covered through EGAD press releases. It's most widely covered issue in the EGAD region at present. We have established a separate task force for this that is leading the member states and partners on the issue of the National Logos on a weekly basis. And we have three ministerial conferences as a result of EGAD action. It was the African Union that asked EGAD to provide platform for the countries to share experience and to coordinate that response in the member states. And to that extent, EGAD developed a food security strategy in response to the National Logos floods and the COVID-19, which is very rampant also in member states. So the EGAD food security and nutrition worker working group has been a leader in this food crisis issues and really have a big role in making an anti-battery action of at least providing the information basis for some of these for anti-battery action. And this, thank you very much. Thank you, thank you very much, Abdi. And thank you indeed for reminding us of the importance of coordination and the role bodies such as the food security, nutrition worker group is contributing and providing the evidence that leads to indeed anti-battery action. And for reminding us always that information is important as long as it is for decision making. So thank you very much. Let us now turn to my colleague of the FLO Director of Emergencies and Resilience, Mr. Ryan Paulsen. Ryan, we'd like to ask you the following question. In the light of extremely concerning acute food security trends outlined in the event today by several speakers, what is your perspective on the kind of intervention we need to stand a chance of curbing such trends? What is the relevance of FAO's work in protecting livelihoods in that respect? Ryan, the floor is yours. Dominique, thank you so much. And hello, Excellencies and colleagues. Good to be with everyone to discuss such an important topic. So thank you for the time today. So a few thoughts in response to, I think these really pertinent questions, Dominique. And we've heard, I think clearly from all the panelists and discussants today, clearly compellingly about the alarming trends when it comes to food security. And related to that, the challenges then that we are facing now and that we are likely to face in the near future, which we collectively need to find a way to address. And of course, the humanitarian sector and humanitarians have continuously prided themselves on being a home for innovation, having a continual focus on these questions of how we improve the efficiency of our actions, the efficiency of aid, all in support of ever better outcomes for the communities that we're looking to serve. So this is clearly something that has been a hallmark of humanitarian action. And yet as we reflect on that together today and we hear the interventions that are being made and we reflect on the way in which we are working in the largest crises globally in these protracted emergency contexts as well. I think it's fair to say that we look in its majority at activities that are fundamentally similar in modalities and approaches to ones that we have had in the recent past. Yet the scale of our collective action has grown. I think last year and colleagues online may be able to correct me, but in terms of orders of magnitude, some 20 billion US dollars were mobilized in support of humanitarian action. So there's clearly responses that are taking place at scale, but as we heard a number of interveners today comment and indeed Director General Chu, I think used a key phrase in this regard. We have a system that's fundamentally still based on reaction. It's a reactive system. It's based on working after an event happens. It's post facto activities. And this is something we do need to ensure that we find a way to address. It obviously doesn't mean that the whole model that we have is outdated clearly an ability to quickly understand when an event happens, what those needs are, where those needs are located and how we respond to them is key and responding to them efficiently is key. But as we've reflected on this together today and as we understand the purpose of our discussions today and the need for an anticipatory approach collectively, I do think these questions around what we can do differently, what we can do better, how to affect the change that we want to see in a truly lasting fashion is key. Not least when we understand what's happening in terms of the frequency of crisis and not least when we reflect on our deepened shared understanding of the complexity of issues in the context in which we're operating. So today's event I think is key. It doesn't necessarily give a complete answer to everything, but it does provide some important elements of the right answer to these questions. It's not a great feat of logic to understand that predictable crisis should be managed earlier. I think we're all convinced of that, but part of the answer too is not just about the timing of the interventions, it's also about the type of interventions and the kind of assistance that we provide to people. And so just to say in that regard that evidence clearly shows that protecting livelihoods, protecting people's ability to produce food, to generate income, to mitigate asset depletion, to mitigate dangers of growing debt burdens in response to crisis, that this is key. And a focus on livelihoods can and will transform the way in which disasters affect households, communities and ultimately countries and prevent the progressive loss of assets that ultimately result in the most severe forms of hunger. And you'd probably expect me to talk about livelihoods, but I think if we're driven by context and driven by needs, if we consider that 80% of people currently in high acute food insecurity are farmers, are herders, are fishers, are foresters in rural areas who all depend on agriculture for survival. This tells us that a focus on protecting livelihoods using an anticipatory approach is ultimately fundamental to the type of transformative change that we want to see happen. We've heard from a number of people on the panel and it's been fascinating to listen to these examples of country experiences. We've heard some compelling examples. Let me give just one other very quick example from Yemen this time. So hundreds of thousands of families, as we know in Yemen face ongoing imminent threat to their sole source of income as a result of easily preventable animal diseases. And this, as we know, is already taking place in a context which is arguably the world's worst humanitarian crisis. And we know at the same time that just $8 of interventions to vaccinate and to deworm a small herd of sheep and goats, five, six animals, can product $500 worth of assets for these families. It has an immediate impact in terms of milk production, increasing this by sometimes as much as 20% with enormous immediate impacts on household nutrition and clearly then especially amongst children. So FAO has over the years been able to measure and quantify the avoided impacts on livelihoods as a result of these types of activities and our evidence, and I do think it's really important and I appreciate the fact that Andrea and Leonard have reminded us just why it is so important for us collectively to build this body of evidence and to communicate this body of evidence. This evidence shows us that not only is it cost effective in terms of the way we work with returns of up to $9 for every dollar invested but we also know that the evidence shows us that anticipatory action will curb food insecurity, will improve nutrition, and will contribute to social cohesion. And I do think it's important that we understand beyond these very immediate impacts, there are also longer term positives that it's really important to understand and communicate on as well. We know that people who face hunger take drastic actions. Obviously, they cut meals, they resort to pulling children out of schools, extreme measures such as selling off land or assets, migrating, we heard David Beasley talk about that at the beginning of our event today. As such, it's clear that protecting people's livelihoods against shocks has benefits that reach far into the future. So if this is the context, if this is what we know, then I do think we also need to be honest with ourselves that currently there is a significant and stark imbalance of funding and consequently, the type of assistance that's being delivered. An analysis by the Global Network Against Food Crisis recently indicates that over the past five years, the agriculture sector has been receiving less than 10% of humanitarian assistance to the food sector. And within that, even less, a very small amount is available for anticipation, only a tiny fraction. Some studies talk about less than 3% of all the funding available of humanitarian financing is for pre-arranged activities to be implemented once warning materialized. So it's clear. It needs to be crystal clear. It should be crystal clear that we cannot afford to do more of the same. We need a transformation of the approaches that we're using moving from simply reactive to something that is much more ethically appropriate and much more efficient from an intervention perspective. We need to make sure we're not just scratching the surface of needs and clearly the future of food crisis interventions need to be integrated. And here I would fully support and echo the comments of many on the call, not least the compelling messages that Len and Mitzi from INPA were sharing with us around the imperative for a systems approach. We need integrated interventions to help manage risk more effectively, not just manage the impacts. We need to connect humanitarian resilience and peace investments in a way that sustainably reduce needs over time. There's a lot more that I could say, but let me stop there in the interest of time. Back to you Dominic, thank you. No doubt you could say much more. Thank you very much. And thank you for reminding us of the need to make sure our system is indeed updated. I think important to focus of course in livelihood as part of anti-patterry action, 80% of the people in food crisis depend on agriculture for their livelihoods. Thank you very much for that. And now let me move to Brian, Brian Lander of the World Food Program. Brian, as we know conflict remains the main driver of humanitarian needs, acute hunger and famine in particular. Can we apply the anti-patterry approach in fragile conflict affected states? And what are the practical implications? What can and should be done to prevent the deterioration of the humanitarian situation in conflict setting? And all of course is WFP changing to adapt to these new needs. Brian, the floor is yours. And good. Thanks Dominic. Thanks Dominic. I'm glad you've raised this question on conflict and we could probably add to that insecurity in general and how it does relate to the work that we're trying to do on anti-patterry action is probably one of the more difficult areas to apply this approach, but I think we're making progress. And certainly there are clear ideas on how we can improve that and to look to respond more effectively in advance of a deterioration in situations. But maybe just quickly to cover a little bit of the scope of the issue around conflict. Famine driven by conflict, but also we can't forget climate shocks and economic downturns really also exacerbated by COVID-19 are really pushing a large population around the world to the brink of famine. We're looking at approximately 41 million people that are on this cliff edge of famine. And in the global report on food crisis in 2021 which covered around 50 countries, we saw that in 2020 conflict was the key driver of much of the need that we saw there and 23 countries, which accounted for about 64% of acute food insecurity amongst these populations. So it's clear that this is a growing trend and a growing issue that we have to grapple with. In addition, the SAO WFP hunger hotspots report from July this year alerted on intensifying violence in a number of key places, not the least Afghanistan that we've seen recently, Central Sahel, Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, just to name a few of them that are the more prominent but there are others where we're seeing disturbing trends which are raising concerns and really should be triggering us into action. 80% of humanitarian needs are in fragile and conflict settings around the world today. And by 2030, according to the World Bank, we're looking at potentially two thirds of the world's extreme poor living in these situations. So we've already got the information, we've got the triggers, it's just then how do we respond in advance of that to help people? So while we move from this reactionary approach to something more anticipatory, we also need to think about applying the practice that we've established in looking at natural hazard risk and extending those out to conflict settings. I think the natural hazards has been a primary focus up until now and I'm not suggesting that we haven't tried to do that in conflict, but I think there is a real impetus now to apply that. So what can we do? Well, first of all, anticipatory action begins with early warning and the analysis that goes behind that. So if we have a given that conflict is a primary driver, then we really need to do this conflict risk analysis. It's got to be allowing us, enabling us to better predict when there's conflicts that will outbreak or deteriorate. It's got to be an integral part of our early warning systems as we look at anticipatory shots and avoiding those blind spots. This includes developing scenarios and forecasting the impact on communities, looking at what it is, the context that we're looking at. We need to have that detailed understanding of who are the actors involved? What are their intentions? What are the dynamics and anticipated impact on the ground? Those factors need to be brought into our early warning analysis, but there are also other challenges because as we do engage in this analysis, it can be perceived as somewhat politically sensitive. And I think we need to get beyond that perception and acknowledge that this is a significant driver of what's going on in the world and we need to mitigate against that perception and allow for that analysis to happen without jeopardizing the neutrality of the actors who then responds to those situations. So I think that's a key understanding that we need to grapple with as we go forward in terms of that analysis. And we're getting better at responding, I think in anticipation. We are putting in place preparatory actions and we are attempting to drive earlier responses, particularly by developing contingency plans, putting in place readiness measures with our teams on the ground and really embedding a no regrets kind of approach, a mentality to it, that if we're going to be able to be effective in this, we have to put those resources and assets out there. This includes rapid targeting of populations, implementing cash base and in-kind systems in a way that diminishes the impact on communities. And hopefully some of those actions may promote resolution or at least an avoidance of a deteriorating security or conflict situation on those communities. So I think as we think through, what do we put on the ground? How can we also impact in a way, the peace situation on the ground? We also deploy staff, expert staff and putting that capacity up front and develop access strategies to this community should the conflict or insecurity break out. So within, just as a short example, within WFP we have developed what we call a corporate alert system, which regularly reviews situations of food security around the world and drives a common narrative within the organization. And I think this is an important lesson in the sense of it provides a basis for a mindset, I think within the organization. We're all on the same page as to what are the situations that are concerned? What should we be thinking about in terms of responding more effectively in advance of these crisis? So I think it's helpful to have that analysis and that framing of it in an alert system, certainly within WFP, but perhaps wider amongst the wider community of humanitarian and development actors. So I think this helps prioritize corporate attention. It prioritizes resources, support to those field operations that need it and assures timely and coordinated anticipatory action and preemptive responses. Maybe just a couple of examples of what that might look like in practice. So ahead of some of the challenges we saw in Afghanistan, we did develop a plan that would pre-position assets in and around the country. And in particular in Tajikistan, Iran, Pakistan and others, this allowed us to put commodities and material in areas and including a logistics hub in Uzbekistan, and it served as storage facility which was on hand and ready should the needs rise which we're seeing now as we've heard earlier. This front loading of stocks and resources allows us to scale up quickly. And so, and we're in addition, we're looking at our fleet of trucks which we can expand to some 240. So it's just an example of where we saw things going potentially wrong, although the conflict is still remains somewhat uncertain. We are putting already in place those means for responding at scale. Just a couple of small points in addition, I know we're behind time. I think we also need to be looking at mitigating the impact of climate risks through anticipatory action, how that can then relate to conflict and how it's destabilizing communities. We've seen several studies that demonstrate the relationship between climate change and conflict. So climate change as a driver of people seeking resources and support and needs that are no longer there. It can rapidly change the dynamic on the ground that can lead to inter-communal violence and other forms of conflict. So, and political unrest for that matter. So I think we do need to explore that link between climate change and how does it precipitate then that the wider concerns around conflict. And so I think as we think about mitigating that climate risk, let's also build in that aspect of where could this go? What sort of political implications does it have for those communities? And then maybe a little bit more broadly, building on that a little bit, I think we also recognize that as we look at the analysis, as we look at the type of anticipatory action that we need, we need to couple that with political engagement. Now, as I mentioned before, we are concerned how that impacts on neutrality of humanitarian actors, but there are political actors out there that can take this work forward. And I think taking that analysis and then applying it in a collaborative way in a cooperative way with those that can engage in political processes, whether it's humanitarian diplomacy, whether it's human rights diplomacy or whether it's political diplomacy. I think all that needs to be brought together in a more concerted way. And let's call it preventive humanitarian diplomacy in general that allows for us to get the access we need to put in place those assets that respond more effectively. So I'll stop there, Dominique. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Brian, for indeed touching the important issue of anticipatory action in conflict setting, keeping in mind that the conflict is the main driver of actual food insecurity. I think affecting about 100 million out of the 155. Very big main driver. So let me now move to our next speaker. And I would like to address a question to Mr. Boupil, the Tomah, head of country cluster delegation for West Africa at IFRC. I did not mention IFRC when I introduced him first. Beginning with the first pilot in Togo and Uganda developed in 2014, the Red Cross National Societies F been pioneering the forecast based financing. There are currently 14 national societies in the region working towards developing the approach. What has been the key lessons learned on the challenge and opportunities to apply it for food security? And I would like to ask you, Mr. Tomah, please to be brief as I would like to allow some time for a one minute question to each of the panelists. So please try to be brief. I'm sorry to push you. Thank you. Thank you, Dominique. And I'll try my best to be brief. I think first of all, thank you for inviting us today to this forum and dialogue. You know, I think in the continuation of dialogues at various levels, I'm sure this will add to our increasing voice in trying to maize humanitarian actions, you know, ex ante and not continue to remain exposed in some sense. So as you said, we've sort of used the last five or six years to take some of this thinking that has been around for almost 15 years now. You know, we first opened a climate center in early 2000s to try and use, you know, climate risk information to already inform our humanitarian actions and largely as some speakers mentioned today, around, you know, natural based risk and around hydro meteorological risks to some extent. But since then, I think what we've done is to sort of try and learn from those approaches and use, you know, almost a decade and a half of learning to try and sort of bring it down to some operational changes within this, to change that request that one of the speakers made today about, you know, how do we systematically change it? So from our side, I think there are two lessons that sort of stand at the top of that. One is that, you know, you can have anti-spatry financing actions or you can have for cost-based financing, but none of that would change local action unless you invest into that local capacity. And so that investment that was needed even earlier on sort of local capacity building and in disaster preparedness at local level so that, you know, the types of intervention needed are known and types of intervention are very clear and they are not complex. And they are very easily linked to the availability of financing at whatever scale that it's available. You know, I think that helps move that sort of concept to sort of real action in some sense. And I couldn't agree more than Brian to say that there's lessons to take from that natural risk to even through fragile settings. And we are trying to do that here in Nigeria but more generally in Sahel, you know, in Sub-Saharan Africa. And the thing there is very simple, you know, if you've invested in building the local capacity or for National Red Cross or any local actor, you know, your ability to humanitarian, you know, access those places just increases dramatically. You know, what are the challenges that we have in northeast of Nigeria or north of Nigeria? Is that humanitarian access is very restrictive or why is it restricted? Because we just don't have capacity on the ground to be able to access it. So not just lack of money, it's also lack of capacity to deliver. And I think from that perspective, our top lesson is that we would need to continue to build on that disaster preparedness investment. Echo mentioned they are investing about 75 million. You know, we ourselves are investing about 100 plus million every year on trying to build our national actors and trying to build their local capacity. And so to be urge everybody on this forum to try and come together for that particular action, try and ensure that a lot of our talk and a lot of our summaries translate into this action at the local level to try and build that capacity. The second point I think I wanted to make in terms of the lessons that we've learned is that, you know, we will reduce to minimize complexity. There's already too much complexity in forecast-based financing or forecast-based actions or early actions as you call it, as they're calling it today. What is the complexity? Forecasts by nature are unpredictable. They are probability-based scenarios. And so there is inherent risk built into that for failure. But the approach that we want to take, and I think we have learned it the hard way, is that you want to have a no-regret strategy. And I think Brian mentioned it just before me, that if you take that no-regret strategy, then all the numbers that you heard today on this panel, the ratios between what you invest $1 and what you get in return on that investment, or from a cost perspective, the lower the cost of prevention action is much more lower, sometimes even one fourth of the cost of response action. I think WFP Executive Director made it even more explicit from the US example. But we know that those numbers exist because in some ways we've known this for a long time. Now that the evidence has accumulated for us to know that this is the case. And so the question we have is that how can we reduce that complexity from the risk-based models that we have in terms of early actions? And the answer is that we should have no-regrets approach because investments both in preparedness and investments in early response will lead you to better results. And even if those models fail sometimes, which they will fail, then there is no regrets there because any way that investment was needed from a preparedness angle, right? And so we, from our perspective, I think what we're saying is that we should reduce complexity and try and make these things very simple. And in that respect, I think what we're asking for, both on the response side from the community itself, but also from the financier side, whether it is the financing instruments or it is the donor community, all of us to agree on some easy action protocols because the more clearly the early action protocols are defined, the better we will be able to utilize the information and analysis that everybody has talked about, but also to be able to clearly agree on the triggers because part of the challenge is that in a very sudden onset, natural disasters, the triggers are very clearly visible. The news and the social media clearly identify those triggers for you, but in a slow onset, in a complex emergency, in a fragile state, sometimes those triggers are not very clear and trying to get a consensus of them can take its own time. And so if there are easily agreed protocols and of course, link to some easily identifiable triggers, link to some verifiable information and data, I think we have a very simple system that can work and we are trying to do that in our own system. So in our house, we've just restructured, I think four years back our pooled fund for humanitarian response, as Echo was saying, it's called disaster relief emergency fund. And what we've simply done is to allow within the protocols for people to ask money for early actions and those protocols have been clearly identified. So people are trained for looking for those triggers and therefore then articulate those triggers and ask for financing around that. And we are very happy to see that the donors has sort of appreciated that, but also the governments where we are working in the countries are starting to look at this model and say, how could we institutionalize it and how could we scale it up? And I think on that point, my last point today is that I think funding is a challenge for us for anticipate reactions and focus based financing. But it is also an opportunity for us in the sense that it can change the way the system currently works, which is exposed, right? And we can make it ex ante, if we try and link that financing to ex ante triggers and I give back to you, Dominic. Thank you so much. Thank you very much, Mr. Tomar. One thing for reminding us of the absolute centrality of investment at in local capacity. I think this was one of the key points of the new key points of your intervention. Let me go now to Amy Montier of the Start Network. And I would like Amy to ask you if you could tell us what opportunity does anti-battery action offer to unlock ownership at local level and how does this ensure its sustainability? Amy, the floor is yours. Please. Thank you very much. Thank you for this opportunity to talk about locally led ownership in the context of anti-spatial action. And I'll be building on the excellent comments made by Mr. Tomar previously. So for me, one of the most exciting things about anti-spatial action is not just about the timing, which is of course so important, but it's also about the opportunity that it unlocks for different forms of coordination, different forms of decision making ahead of time. As we've heard from the many examples today of anti-spatial action from those field examples, a lot of what anti-spatial action involves is about analyzing risks ahead of time, setting triggers, putting in place plans, putting in place financing, all ahead of the crisis event. And this offers different opportunities to actually engage in a deeper way with communities at risk ahead of time and engage with those frontline community responders as well. And so for example, we heard the example from my colleague in Senegal who talked a little bit about the collaboration with the government in the drought anti-spatiary system, but also we have another system in Pakistan, a disastrous finance system, which supports this network of NGOs to get ahead of three different types of hazards, floods, droughts, and heat waves. And there's a collaboration there, the network of organizations of local national NGOs working together with INGOs, working together with local authorities as well and representative from the National Disaster Management Agency. And they're working together to do things like set these triggers, work in terms of what actions are needed, when and where and for whom when crisis scenarios emerge in the future. And I think this kind of opportunity then to push this decision-making and decentralize decision-making more ahead of crisis is particularly interesting in the case of food crisis. And that's because of the complexities of food crisis, which we've heard a lot about today. If we take the example of anticipating a flood situation, we might have a kind of 10-day window between receiving a forecast and actually the onset of that crisis. If we take a food crisis, as we've discussed today, that can unfold over months, if not years even. And actually there's so many different windows of opportunity to do things to support communities with different kinds of actions at different moments of time. And if you can imagine the complexity of that, that you have say, 30 or $60 per person to support them. Where do you time? How do you target that assistance? What are the most effective windows of opportunity when those community members want support and what kind of supports do they need? Because often in anticipatory action, we talk about mitigating the impact or avoiding losses. But it's without having a really nuanced understanding of what loss for whom, where, that actually we can understand what are we trying to achieve and evaluate the effectiveness of those systems that we set up. And we had some comments today in the chat about gender and about the importance of integrating those perspectives because we know that women, for example, or women that farm households experience risks in different ways or may need or want support in different ways to male farmers or male-headed households. And actually it's that kind of nuanced understanding of what we're trying to do that's particularly important and Start Network produced a research on this earlier this year which we will be sharing shortly. And so obviously the second point that we're saying there is then who's best placed to actually decide on what is needed and when. And it's of course, the people who know the best which are the communities who are actually at risk of these crises or those frontline local responders who are embedded in those communities as well. So engaging these local responders, having them part of the system, it's not just the right thing to do, but actually it's going to ensure the effectiveness of what we're trying to do. It's going to ensure that level of nuance that we need to be able to set up those systems and ensure their sustainability. And the last point just to make from the Start Network side I think often when people think of locally led, they think, oh, that's small scale or it's patchwork. It's too difficult to scale. But actually on the Start Network side what we've been trying to do and this year we're launching the Start Financing Society which is a global infrastructure that actually supports those locally led networks with access to things like risk analytics, collective planning, pre-arranged financing that's organized efficiently using a different number of crisis response mechanisms and actually enabling us to scale this locally led action and ensure that the effectiveness and sustainability of these systems. Thank you. Thank you very much Amy Lee again for reminding us among many things of the importance of local responder to ensure effective responses and of course presenting the role of the Start Network. Well colleagues, as you have seen we are running short of time but still there was a very rich exchange in the Q&A and in the chat. So we have quite a number of questions from the audience and we would like to allow for one minute, one minute quick response from each of the panelists on the following. And first I would like to go to Ms. Kuleyma and Mr. Mitzi with the following question. Absence of development programs in vulnerable areas is one of the factor contributing to increased vulnerability and therefore the need for emergency or anti-battery action programs. Anti-battery action funding is mainly channeled through humanitarian funding channels would it be not more logic to have anti-battery action funding also part of development funding? Quite a long question but I'm asking you for very short answer. Ms. Kuleyma, if you want to go first, one minute please. Okay, I think it's not an either or and I'm sure Leonardo will elaborate on what is done from the development side on this. I would like maybe to elaborate a bit on the question for me the most challenging aspect in this discussion is how to move from a solely needs-based approach to a risk-based one. This requires indeed a mental shift to fully adopting a no regrets approach but what the question is pointing out too is that it also requires to create a sufficient financial space to invest resources in response to needs that have not yet materialized whilst we are at the same time facing acute needs which might have materialized and that's a big ethical dilemma as well that we have on the humanitarian side. So we need to enlarge this donor base and create that space so that we can do both at the same time and so that we gear the international system, humanitarian and development together to respond in an anticipatory manner and adopting a no regrets approach. Thank you very much, Andrea. Leonhard, can we have your views please? Dominic, I think we can actually use the global network to do some work on anticipatory action. And yes, international partnerships do a lot of anticipatory action. The neighborhood and development and the international cooperation instrument has a lot of interventions. What we did together with Echo on Desert Locusts is what I call a Nexus team approach between Echo and INDPA on anticipatory action. The work we do on ARC, the work we do on the Caribbean, catastrophe, risk insurance facility and the work we do in terms of research and innovation around acrocology, around land and land rights, the work we do on greening Africa, the work that we will be doing with the French and with a number of member states around the great green wall. All this is clearly in DG instruments with also colleagues from Echo but we need better coordination. What Emily said, I think is key and also what Brian and Ryan said. We need to get the data analytics right but also we need to get the structures that the global network is trying to do between national, regional and global and triggering better coordination on the ground. The team Europe approach that the European Union is trying to construe in our programming is not only the commission services but also our member states. And I think with the wrong based agencies with this, it's not a question just of the company but what is working best with the resources we have? Because yes, we often ourselves and our constituencies speak about finance, lack of finance, we need more finance. I think what we need to do is smarter finance, targeting, return on investment of what we can do smarter. Resources might not be getting any better in the future. There is so much competition out there. I don't need to say it but clearly a smarter approach in terms of tools, instruments using and unleashing the full potential of digital and innovative applications, just spatial data to really look into issues around water, around conflict, around pastoralism. And the global network Dominic can be an entry point at least one of the entry points. Over. Thank you very much, Leonardo and Andrea. Let me now move to Pete and Rain actually and we had a question in the Q&A for Bangladesh and on whether the database of Venerable also linked to the government social security registry social registry and the national social protection system. But I would like of course to generalize this to ask can we link anti-factor reaction to social protection? Is this important and why? So who wants to go first, Pete? Okay, let me try to reply to this. So the database that we've set up, we have consulted a number of the existing social safety nets and see whether these households were indeed meeting your criteria that the five partner agencies have come up with. But yes, to go to the larger question, definitely we'd like to see how the anti-civatory action can be used as an element in making social protection more adaptive, more shock responsive. We are developing some concepts on that. We are trying out some small pilots on that. And well, let's talk again in one or two years and see how it works. But definitely this is one way to link social protection which has mechanisms to reach people to use those to also then quickly respond to any shock that comes their way. Back to you. Thank you very much, Pete. Dominique, thank you. So maybe then on this broader question, yes indeed. I mean, linking social protection to anti-civatory action is key. Maybe actually if we refame it a little bit, this question around how we can actually make social protection mechanisms themselves more anticipatory is clearly an important priority. Certainly for FAO, one of our priorities when we look at our anticipatory action scale up plans in the next few years. And I think it's so important to do it. And I think the question is very welcome because all of these comments we've been hearing today in the discussion has pointed to the imperative to make sure that anticipatory action is not simply viewed as something that should sit fully within the remit of humanitarian action and limited to humanitarian tools and humanitarian financing. Coming back to this systems comment that was made before, I think it's indispensable that we move beyond it. So making social protection mechanisms more anticipatory, I think is at the heart of what we're trying to do. And I think allows us to have also wider conversations then around the extent to which protection from shocks features more prominently is embedded more into the heart of social policies of governments and other ones. I know we're out of time, but just to say I do, we've had reference, including importantly from Commissioner Lenishitz today to this partnership program that FAO has with ECHO. And we see this as a vital pioneering initiative to help work precisely on these type of links. We're starting this year in Asia and then hopefully in other regions too. But thank you very much for the question Dominic. Thank you. And I will now move to Mr. Thomas and Miss Montier. And you could please tell us what are the current key barriers to scaling locally led anti-battle reaction to address food crisis? And Miss Montier, you want to go first? And key barriers to scaling locally led. I think the most important thing is that the structures, I think that we are setting up are being set up in a way that is inclusive of the needs and priorities of these local actors. I think as mentioned before in my intervention, often there's an assumption that if we start to involve local actors, that things will necessarily get very fragmented and small scale. And this is not necessarily the case. There are ways to connect together locally led initiatives as mentioned, as we've been trying to do at Start Network by supporting the establishment of locally led networks so that can actually drive these systems themselves. And there are also ways to ensure that macro level schemes, for example, government level schemes actually integrates the priorities and needs of local actors. So as I mentioned earlier with this example of Senegal, we're going through a process at the moment of working with the government of Senegal to actually decentralize the national level contingency planning to province level and start to integrate much more the inputs of different communities and local responders into that process. So there's ways to involve local national responders and have their priorities at the center of this whilst also ensuring that we can continue to scale and connect to larger macro level schemes. So yeah, thank you myself. Thank you very much Emily and let me know Mr. Thomas, Mr. Thomas, please. Thank you so much for that Dominique. I think, you know, from our perspective, the barriers are, you know, sort of built around if you want to mean issues. One is the one that the echo already mentioned is the ethical dilemma between the acute and the anticipatory. You know, how do you overcome that sort of humanitarian imperative for acute, but knowing that anticipatory would probably be better and more efficient and more effective but yet try and find that balance both from a decision making perspective but also from a distance perspective in trying to change your investments and your financing, right? So I think that's the bigger one sort of at the top of the level. The other barrier I think we see is and I think your colleague from FA already mentioned this, the issue around social protection systems. I think the social protection systems were not built you know, for using, you know now readily available risk information in packageable form and ready to be understood form in some sense. And I think the adaptation of social protection systems and the interventions to this, you know, risk-based model I think would be a key to reduce that barrier especially for food security purposes because in many cases we know that protection of livelihoods and you know, cash as an instrument and now using technology in particular to distribute cash. So the, you know, the earlier barriers that we had for delivery are not there. The barriers that we have now are the social policy level to try and make it more trigger-based and you know, more easily identifiable so they can be implemented. Thank you very much, Mupinda for your comments. And finally, let me move to Mr. Jamal. Adi, you refer to the situation in the desert locust situation in the IGAT region. Could you tell us what anti-patterny measures as IGAT put in place to mitigate future impacts of desert locust on the food security and nutrition situation of communities in the region? Very briefly, please, one minute. Thank you, Dominique. I think the anticipatory action that IGAT did was mostly trying to get political build-up of advocacy for the desert locust issues. I think the convening the ministers every once a while and being not only the ministers and these ministers, we also brought all the humanitarian agencies also in this meeting, bringing the partners together is already making sure that the issue of desert locust is here with us and the countries need to be prepared for it. And in cases where there's a shortfall in one of the countries, we used to provide press releases and press conferences to make sure that that country is resourced adequately. That's mostly the funding part, it was a difficult part, but also we looked at the longer, in-medium term sort of things. Focus on the humanitarian food crisis more to an extent that we now have a forum we are establishing with the World Bank on for desert locust and transplant issues. Thank you. Thank you very much, Abdi. And I would like to really thank all our excellent speakers today. I think it has been very rich and stimulating a change on what is critical today and one that requires our collective and urgent effort. And I will try not to, due to time constraint to summarize in very briefly the key takeaways bearing in mind that we will share with you all the longest version as soon as possible. So first of all, we are seeing clear evidence that hunger and humanitarian needs are on the rise. This is proving increasingly difficult to keep up with these rapidly growing needs. At the same time, shocks to food system and food security are today to a great degree predictable and anticipating food crisis is an obtainable goal, one which we need to collectively pursue. We must commit to scaling up anti-pattern reaction to reach more people, cover more geographic area and apply to a wider range of hazards and context. However, we are still on the learning curve and this came out from many intervention today. This crucial to gain more and more diverse practical experience to scale up anti-pattern programming, build collective evidence and systematically disseminate information. Stepping up anti-pattern reaction for food crisis required boldness and innovation. For this, we need to overcome operational inertias that favor well-established practices and take determined political action. Anti-pattern reaction can play a key role in building resilient aggregate food system. One of the key global goals articulated by the UN Food System Summit as such it is the responsibility of all actors including development and peace actors. We must also strengthen and invest in early warning and food security information system. We need to ensure more predictably, flexibly and ensure availability of funding for anti-pattern reaction. Finally, we must also ensure sustainability of anti-pattern reaction through ownership and capacity building a country and a local level. So these are just a few of the key takeaways. There are more we'll be sharing with you the more detailed version of these takeaways. So now we have reached the end of this event and ladies and gentlemen, I would say it has been a very rich and inspiring event and we thank you very much for taking part and thank you again to all our excellent speakers, the richness of the dialogue illustrates the importance of the dialogue and the importance of the topic of anti-pattern reaction as a key contribution to ending anger and achieving the SDG and SDG2 in particular. With that, I would like to thank you all and wish you a good rest of the day. Bye-bye. Thank you, bye-bye. Thank you Dominique. Thank you Dominique, bye-bye. Down soon. Thank you Dominique. Bye. Thank you Dominique, I'm there. Yep, good one. Thank you Dominique.