Forecasting hazards, averting disasters

5.2   FbA with governments and through 

social protection and safety nets

Several countries have developed nationally led or 

government-implemented FbA mechanisms. WFP is 

supporting government agencies to develop SOPs 

with pre-agreed triggers and actions in five countries: 

Bangladesh, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Nepal 

and the Philippines. In Zimbabwe, the Ministry of 

Agriculture and WFP helped farmers switch to drought-

tolerant crops when the risk of drought was high. At the 

national level, forecast-based action has been integrated 

into safety net programmes in Ethiopia, Kenya and 

Uganda, among others. 

Social protection systems can respond to shocks 

through vertical or horizontal expansion, piggybacking 

on pre-established programmes, aligning social protection 

and humanitarian systems or refocusing existing resources 

(O’Brien et al., 2018). By linking to established early 

warning systems, regular cash transfers and other forms 

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of safety net can help reduce the impact of climate 

extremes on poor families. Additional features entail 

climate- and disaster-sensitive targeting and planning; 

central coordination and registries for targeting and 

verifying disbursements; partnerships between public, 

private and non-state actors; pooling funds and smoothing 

expenditures; financing and flexible systems for scaling 

up when a shock occurs; the provision of timely and 

predictable benefits; and interventions to support 

livelihoods, all of which can increase the effectiveness of 

social protection systems (Castello et al., 2017; O’Brien et 

al., 2018; Bastagli and Holmes, 2014; World Bank, 2013; 

Kuriakose et al., 2012). Social protection programmes that 

already include shock-response systems, such as the HSNP, 

are more suited to scaling up or integrating FbA.