This policy brief and its accompanying structured summary reflect SPARC’s learning on why the main models used by the international humanitarian community for planning anticipatory action show limited promise in difficult places and what alternative approaches might be more helpful.
Humanitarian agencies are giving progressively more attention to anticipatory action, i.e. proactive response to the threat of a crisis. But successful models for such action are not necessarily replicable in ‘difficult places’ with conflicts and recurring crises. Conflicts affect everything that can happen where it occurs. SPARC has conducted many research studies over the past five years about enhancing livelihoods in these difficult places, including studies that directly looked at early warning and anticipatory action.
The policy review looked at all SPARC publications, and it distils all of the findings and recommendations that are relevant to supporting anticipatory action in conflicts and recurring crises. This brief does not set out a full analysis of everything that is known about anticipatory action in conflicts and recurring crises. It limits itself to synthesising the lessons from SPARC’s other studies. Each had its own methodological approach.