Pablo Suarez

Climate forecasts in disaster management: Red Cross flood operations in West Africa, 2008

In 2008, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) used a seasonal forecast for West Africa for the first time to implement an Early Warning, Early Action strategy for enhanced flood preparedness and response. Interviews with disaster managers suggest that this approach improved their capacity and response. Relief supplies reached flood victims within days, as opposed to weeks in previous years, thereby preventing further loss of life, illness, and setbacks to livelihoods, as well as augmenting the efficiency of resource use. This case demonstrates the potential benefits to be realised from the use of medium-to-long-range forecasts in disaster management, especially in the context of potential increases in extreme weather and climate-related events due to climate variability and change. However, harnessing the full potential of these forecasts will require continued effort and collaboration among disaster managers, climate service providers, and major humanitarian donors.

Cognition, caution, and credibility: the risks of climate forecast application

Weather and climate forecasters are now in the business of communicating seasonal climate forecasts to decision makers. While it seems clear that these forecasts carry a great many potential benefits, it also appears possible that conveying too much information about the forecasts could have the potential to harm people. Based on theories from behavioral economics, we argue that many people are likely to overestimate the potential dangers of forecasts, and to err on the side of communicating too little information. We support this argument with evidence gathered over the last three years in Zimbabwe, in a project designed to help subsistence farmers understand and use seasonal rainfall forecasts.

Integrating Seasonal Forecasts and Insurance for Adaptation Among Subsistence Farmers: The Case of Malawi

Climate variability poses a severe threat to subsistence farmers in southern Africa. Two different approaches have emerged in recent years to address these threats: the use of seasonal precipitation forecasts for risk reduction (for example, choosing seed varieties that can perform well for expected rainfall conditions), and the use of innovative financial instruments for risk sharing (for example, index-based weather insurance bundled to microcredit for agricultural inputs). So far these two approaches have remained entirely separated. This paper explores the integration of seasonal forecasts into an ongoing pilot insurance scheme for smallholder farmers in Malawi. The authors propose a model that adjusts the amount of high-yield agricultural inputs given to farmers to favorable or unfavorable rainfall conditions expected for the season. Simulation results - combining climatic, agricultural, and financial models - indicate that this approach substantially increases production in La Nina years (when droughts are very unlikely for the study area), and reduces losses in El Nino years (when insufficient rainfall often damages crops). Cumulative gross revenues are more than twice as large for the proposed scheme, given modeling assumptions. The resulting accumulation of wealth can reduce long-term vulnerability to drought for participating farmers. Conclusions highlight the potential of this approach for adaptation to climate variability and change in southern Africa.

Using Seasonal Climate Forecasts to Guide Disaster Management: The Red Cross Experience during the 2008 West Africa Floods

In 2008, the seasonal forecast issued at the Seasonal Climate Outlook Forum for West Africa (PRESAO) announced a high risk of above-normal rainfall for the July–September rainy season. With probabilities for above-normal rainfall of 0.45, this forecast indicated noteworthy increases in the risk of heavy rainfall. When this information reached the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) West and Central Africa Office, it led to significant changes in the organization’s flood response operations. The IFRC regional office requested funds in advance of anticipated floods, prepositioned disaster relief items in strategic locations across West Africa to benefit up to 9,500 families, updated its flood contingency plans, and alerted vulnerable communities and decision-makers across the region. This forecast-based preparedness resulted in a decrease in the number of lives, property, and livelihoods lost to floods, compared to just one year prior in 2007 when similar floods claimed above 300 lives in the region. This article demonstrates how a science-based early warning informed decisions and saved lives by triggering action in anticipation of forecast events. It analyses what it took to move decision-makers to action, based on seasonal climate information, and to overcome traditional barriers to the uptake of seasonal climate information in the region, providing evidence that these barriers can be overcome. While some institutional, communication and technical barriers were addressed in 2008, many challenges remain. Scientists and humanitarians need to build more common ground.

HIV/AIDS, Climate Change and Disaster Management: Challenges for Institutions in Malawi

Southern African institutions involved in disaster management face two major new threats: the HIV/AIDS pandemic (eroding organizational capacity and increasing vulnerability of the population), and climate change (higher risk of extreme events and disasters). Analyzing the combined effects of these two threats on six disaster-related institutions in Malawi, the authors find evidence of a growing gap between demand for their services and capacity to satisfy that demand. HIV/AIDS leads to staff attrition, high vacancy rates, absenteeism, increased workload and other negative effects enhanced by human resources policies and financial limitations. Many necessary tasks cannot be carried out adequately with constraints such as the 42 percent vacancy rate in the Department of Poverty and Disaster Management Affairs, or the reduction of rainfall stations operated by the Meteorological Service from over 800 in 1988 to just 135 in 2006. The authors highlight implications of declining organizational capacity for climate change adaptation, and formulate recommendations.

Vulnerability assessments, identity and spatial scale challenges in disaster-risk reduction

Current approaches to vulnerability assessment for disaster-risk reduction (DRR) commonly apply generalised, a priori determinants of vulnerability to particular hazards in particular places. Although they may allow for policy-level legibility at high levels of spatial scale, these approaches suffer from attribution problems that become more acute as the level of analysis is localised and the population under investigation experiences greater vulnerability. In this article, we locate the source of this problem in a spatial scale mismatch between the essentialist framings of identity behind these generalised determinants of vulnerability and the intersectional, situational character of identity in the places where DRR interventions are designed and implemented. Using the Livelihoods as Intimate Government (LIG) approach to identify and understand different vulnerabilities to flooding in a community in southern Zambia, we empirically demonstrate how essentialist framings of identity produce this mismatch. Further, we illustrate a means of operationalising intersectional, situational framings of identity to achieve greater and more productive understandings of hazard vulnerability than available through the application of general determinants of vulnerability to specific places and cases.

Development & Climate Days at COP 18 meeting report

The Development & Climate Days celebrated its 10th anniversary at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change COP 18 in Doha, Qatar (1–2 December 2012). With a vision of re-energizing the original purpose of bringing together policy-makers, practitioners and researchers for intensely participatory learning, dialogue and networking, this event convened over 200 negotiators, policy-makers, scientists, funding agencies and development practitioners. A highly interactive, out-of-the-box programme featured ‘speed networking’ icebreaker sessions, experiential learning games about climate risk management and development, sharply moderated discussions, high-level panels and a ‘Beyond the Film Festival’. Without support from the habitual Powerpoint presentation format, each of these sessions aimed to foster an environment of collaboration among participants, and inject serious fun into the climate and development dialogue processes. Key messages emerging from the event included: (i) considering ways to reduce social exclusion and generating ‘constituencies of demand’, in order to place the injustice of climate change in a political agenda guided by science, (ii) addressing the role of sub-national governments in delivering climate and development financing at community level, (iii) integrating climate services into climate-smart development, and (iv) improving understanding of Loss and Damage from the research, policy and practice perspectives.

Climate change adaptation: integrating climate science into humanitarian work

A changing climate means more work for humanitarian organizations. In the face of rising dangers, science-based information about likely threats can be used to reduce risk and improve resource allocation. By doing so, humanitarian organizations can enhance their work even in the face of the rising risks of climate change.

Guest editorial: games for learning and dialogue on humanitarian work

Purpose – The purpose of this guest editorial is to provide the introduction and context of the Special Issue on Games for Learning and Dialogue on Humanitarian Work. The Special Issue aims to promote the development, deployment, and analysis of games for the humanitarian sector: it investigates how games can meaningfully engage people and organizations in experiencing, understanding and improving complex systems. Design/methodology/approach – The editorial describes the need and motivation for building a body of knowledge on the use of games in the humanitarian sector. It further gives an overview of the three papers included in this Special Issue and how they contribute to building such a body of knowledge. Findings – Games enable participants to experience the complexity of humanitarian systems, linking decisions with consequences. Even though game-like approaches have been used for decades in disaster management, there is little written about it. The papers included in this Special Issue provide insig...

Using a Game to Engage Stakeholders in Extreme Event Attribution Science

The impacts of weather and climate-related disasters are increasing, and climate change can exacerbate many disasters. Effectively communicating climate risk and integrating science into policy requires scientists and stakeholders to work together. But dialogue between scientists and policymakers can be challenging given the inherently multidimensional nature of the issues at stake when managing climate risks. Building on the growing use of serious games to create dialogue between stakeholders, we present a new game for policymakers called Climate Attribution Under Loss and Damage: Risking, Observing, Negotiating (CAULDRON). CAULDRON aims to communicate understanding of the science attributing extreme events to climate change in a memorable and compelling way, and create space for dialogue around policy decisions addressing changing risks and loss and damage from climate change. We describe the process of developing CAULDRON, and draw on observations of players and their feedback to demonstrate its potential to facilitate the interpretation of probabilistic climate information and the understanding of its relevance to informing policy. Scientists looking to engage with stakeholders can learn valuable lessons in adopting similar innovative approaches. The suitability of games depends on the policy context but, if used appropriately, experiential learning can drive coproduced understanding and meaningful dialogue.