We need to integrate anticipatory action into disaster management
Technological advancement, as in many other fields, has created new opportunities for managing disasters caused by natural hazards. Bangladesh's Flood Forecasting and Warning Centre (FFWC) can now issue deterministic forecasts, highly accurate predictions of flooding, with a lead time of five days for monsoon floods and three days for flash floods. These forecasts are generated by analysing weather patterns, rainfall, and water flows in major river systems. Localised forecasts are also possible for unions or wards, including analysis of likely hazard impacts.
Such improvements in forecasting capacity create both a moral and practical imperative to act early, rather than waiting for hazards to strike and inflict losses on poor and vulnerable people. Once a deterministic forecast indicates inundation within three to five days in specific areas, actions such as evacuation or the pre-positioning of relief can save lives and protect livelihoods. However, delivering physical relief to remote areas within such a short timeframe remains a major challenge. A parallel technological advancement—mobile money transfer systems—offers a solution by enabling rapid cash support to vulnerable families.
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel. Emergency cash transfers enable families to meet their own needs, such as hiring boats for evacuation, relocating livestock, and storing food and medicine. This form of assistance, triggered by deterministic forecasts, is known as anticipatory action. It is increasingly being adopted worldwide to help at-risk families take proactive measures to reduce disaster impacts.
Conventional humanitarian response usually begins only after a hazard strikes. Anticipatory action, by contrast, reaches families before a disaster unfolds, offering key advantages. Most importantly, it avoids delays caused by bureaucratic procedures—financial approvals, damage assessments, beneficiary identification, procurement, and transportation—by securing pre-approved financing and identifying vulnerable households in advance. Using mobile money transfers instead of in-kind relief further ensures families receive assistance quickly and directly.
Secondly, small interventions before a shock can prevent major losses. For example, modest financial support may enable a household to move livestock, their main productive asset, to safety. Post-disaster relief may attempt to compensate for losses, but many are irreversible. No amount of aid can undo the suffering of marginalised people, forced to remain in an inundated home, watching their meagre possessions float away as they await rescue.
Thirdly, anticipatory action upholds dignity by enabling households to take protective measures on their own terms, according to their priorities.
In 2024, CARE Bangladesh, in collaboration with the Department of Disaster Management (DDM) and with funding from the European Union, successfully piloted anticipatory action through the project "Scaling Up Forecast-based Action and Learning (SUFAL)." Under this initiative, emergency cash transfers of Tk 7,000 were provided to 1,307 households 12 to 24 hours before monsoon and flash floods inundated homes across 25 unions in Bogura, Gaibandha, Jamalpur, Kurigram, Sylhet, Netrokona, and Sunamganj. An evaluation showed that families used the cash to purchase and store food, buy medicines, protect livestock, hire boats, and take other measures. On average, assets worth over Tk 55,000 were saved per household. For every taka transferred, the estimated return was 12-fold, demonstrating the cost-effectiveness of anticipatory action.
The pilot aligned with the government's Gratuitous Relief (GR) programme in terms of transfer amounts, beneficiary selection, and local government engagement. This alignment provided strong evidence that anticipatory action is both feasible and compatible with existing disaster response mechanisms.
Anticipatory action is recognised in Bangladesh's Standing Orders on Disasters (SOD) 2019. In 2024, the Ministry of Disaster Management and Relief also approved the National Early Action Protocol (NEAP), a guiding document for anticipatory action in response to monsoon floods. However, to scale up implementation, the government must amend the Humanitarian Assistance Programme Implementation Guidelines (2012-13), which currently allow the use of funds only during and after disasters. These guidelines should be revised to permit spending before, during, and after disasters, and to expand anticipatory action through programmes, such as the Employment Generation Programme for the Poorest (EGPP).
Policy reform must be accompanied by dedicated funding. This includes additional budget allocations for the GR programme and EGPP, as well as financing from the National and District Disaster Management Funds, with necessary adjustments. Importantly, anticipatory action should not divert resources from post-disaster response, which remains essential for large-scale or prolonged crises.
In the longer term, anticipatory action can be integrated into a comprehensive shock-responsive or adaptive social protection framework. This could involve linking it with social protection schemes—such as the old age allowance, disability allowance, and widow allowance—by providing top-up cash transfers to existing beneficiaries, who are among the most vulnerable groups.
Anticipatory action is no longer just an innovation; it is a necessity. With modest policy reforms and dedicated funding, Bangladesh can reduce disaster losses, protect livelihoods, and preserve the dignity of its most vulnerable citizens.
Fazley Elahi Mahmud is a social protection specialist and international consultant on social protection. He can be reached at [email protected].
Views expressed in this article are the author's own.
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