DRiSL: The Drought Risk finance Science Laboratory

Whether on television, newspapers, the internet or first-hand we have all seen the damage that floods, droughts and other weather hazards can have on people's lives and their livelihoods. It is a sad fact that such hazard events disproportionately impact developing countries and poor people. However it is also increasingly evident that acting before a disaster occurs can save lives. For example, frontline humanitarian organisations and government agencies can themselves prepare by getting supplies and staff in readiness. More importantly, agencies can directly help the population prepare so that the impacts of a hazard are actually much reduced. Such actions depend on the lead time of a forecast but can range for example from distributing money, drought-resistant seeds, animal fodder to communities to ensuring evacuation procedures are followed. Acting before an event means they can also do this at a lower cost than the traditional 'late' post disaster humanitarian response. As a result there is growing momentum within the humanitarian system to move beyond the current 'begging bowl' funding model of post-disaster appeals, towards obtaining and distributing humanitarian funds before a disaster occurs. This change can enable humanitarians to mobilise more collaboratively, more predictably, and importantly in anticipation of crises. For this to occur requires trustworthy forecasts of hazards like storms, floods and droughts, and credible information on the condition of the people and systems exposed to them.

Forecast based financing and Disaster Risk financing initiatives, utilise information to anticipate potential disasters and set pre-agreed triggers for the release of disaster prevention finance. The advantage of this approach is that it is data-driven and objective. It thereby circumvents long debates around potentially conflicting early warning signs which tend to paralyse humanitarian action. It puts in place a robust predictable process to release funding or initiate action before a disaster occurs. Humanitarian agencies working on developing these systems face a problem, however. They are not scientists nor social scientists; but they need to use information from both realms of research to trigger the systems and have confidence in this information.

They also must be accountable to the people that the system looks to support and the donors that finance it. The START Network Drought financing facility (DFF) and the Weithungerhilfe (WHH) Madagascar Forecast based financing project are both at this juncture of selection and development of scientific data to apply to these initiatives. The DFF having begun the design with a Global Parametric model and have a prototype model that requires testing and evaluation, whereas the WHH Madagascar Forecast based financing project is starting out from the beginning. However, currently no process, independent honest broker, or method to provide an independent review of the scientific (science and social science) credibility of these systems exists in an operational context. This is a stumbling point in the adoption of these ground breaking initiatives by other organisations.

This project looks to meet the needs of humanitarian agencies. In particular it will provide "scientific due diligence" to the forecast and action components of these proactive schemes and hence ensure that the information going into them is as trustworthy as possible. It will assess a suit of global drought models in regard to their uncertainty and ability to depict emerging food security crisis. Global data products will be explored alongside data on the ground of drought and food security events in the three test sites associated of Pakistan, Zimbabwe and Madagascar. It will help the humanitarian practitioners understand the limitations of the science for decision making and the fundamental risk of acting proactively when acting with forecast and monitoring information.

DRiSL is a demand-led project addressing the pivotal needs of humanitarian agencies involved in drought risk financing initiatives. We focus our research on the START network Drought Finance Facility and the Weithungerhilfe (WHH) led equivalent for Madagascar providing a clear and direct pathway to impact for the project. We expect DRiSL will have a direct and measurable impact on these initiatives and hence the people at risk they mean to serve, resulting in modifications to disaster risk financing facility design.

The project will undertake a 'scientific due diligence' approach to evaluating the scientific and social scientific basis of disaster risk financing. Given the inevitable possibility with risk based assessments that a potential crises is missed or a false alarm raised, a process of 'scientific due diligence' ensures that the risks of disaster resilience finance distribution are assessed in as an accountable, transparent and defensible manner as possible. The achievement of these attributes provides a sound basis to establishing the legitimacy and credibility of using financial instruments for building resilience to disasters. Ultimately therefore the research facilitates the up and out-scaling of risk financing initiatives.

Impact is ensuring through the participation of humanitarian practitioners as project partners, namely through the START network. The START network comprises 42 national and international aid agencies, has 7000 partners, in 200 countries and territories worldwide, from five continents. To illustrate the START network's reach and impact, by August 2016 the associated START Fund had been activated on 76 occasions, and had reached 4.2 million people across 45 countries. Whilst one of the network's other programmes, START Engage manages an extensive disasters and emergencies preparedness programme (DEPP), with 14 separate projects involving 44 organisations in 10 countries.

We will utilise a Participatory Impact Pathways Analysis (PIPA) framework and method to plan, monitor and evaluate the impact of our project. This will be rooted in, and flow from a coherent 'Theory of Change' established early in the project. Impact will also be ensured by the involvement of project partners associated with on-going DfID-NERC programmes of Future Climate for Africa and SHEAR.