Early Warnings for All will fail without local power

Early Warnings for All will fail without local power

Blog: Early Warning for All will fail without local power b Shivangi Chavdaa, Head of Programmes, GNDR

Early warning systems are widely recognised as one of the most cost-effective investments in disaster risk reduction. Yet for millions of people living on the frontline of climate and disaster risks, warnings still arrive too late, in the wrong form, or not at all. This is not a failure of technology. It is a failure of governance – and of political will to localise power.

As global initiatives such as Early Warnings for All gain momentum, there is an urgent risk that progress will be measured in satellites launched and dashboards built, rather than in lives protected and losses avoided at the community level. GNDR’s Strategic Roadmap on Localised Early Warning Systems challenges this trajectory and offers a clear message to policymakers: early warning systems will only be effective when they are locally governed, locally trusted, and locally actionable.

The localisation gap in early warning systems

Over the past decade, countries have made notable advances in hazard monitoring and forecasting. However, GNDR’s engagement with civil society organisations across regions reveals a persistent and systemic gap between national early warning infrastructure and community-level action.

Warnings are often hazard-centric, not risk-informed. They rarely reflect local exposure, vulnerability, or coping capacities. Information is disseminated without considering language, gender, disability, livelihood patterns, or trust in institutions. Crucially, early warnings frequently lack clear, feasible triggers for early or anticipatory action at the local level.

Local actors = community-based organisations, women’s groups, youth networks, and local authorities – are routinely positioned as the “last mile” of delivery. In reality, they are the first interface between risk information and protective action. Yet they remain excluded from decision-making, under-resourced, and treated as implementers rather than system partners.

A framework for systems change

Published today, the Strategic Roadmap – which is part of our Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office funded project, Localising Early Warning Systems and Anticipatory Action through CSOs, with support from the British Red Cross and the Risk-informed Early Action partnership (REAP) – draws on the knowledge and experience of civil society organisations and frontline communities across GNDR’s network of 2,000+ member organisations in 130+ countries. It makes the case for a fundamental shift in how early warning systems are designed, funded, and governed – structured around six strategic priorities: governance and policy integration; community engagement and ownership; technology, innovation, and data; capacity strengthening; financing and sustainability; and knowledge, learning, and evidence.

At its core, the roadmap argues that communities must be treated as co-creators and custodians of early warning systems – not as passive recipients of information. Indigenous and traditional knowledge must be recognised as a core input to risk understanding. And the financing models that currently undermine local ownership must be replaced with flexible, direct, long-term funding that allows systems to outlast the projects that built them.

What needs to change: recommendations by stakeholder

The roadmap sets out targeted recommendations for four groups.

Local communities and civil society organisations are called on to strengthen community-based disaster management structures, promote inclusive participation of women, youth, persons with disabilities, and indigenous peoples, and invest in community-led monitoring and learning. Integrating indigenous and traditional knowledge with scientific data – to co-create culturally relevant warning systems – is central to this agenda.

Local and national governments must institutionalise localised EWS within national DRR, climate adaptation, and development frameworks, with clear mandates and accountability mechanisms. The roadmap calls for sustained budget allocations for maintenance, training, and community engagement – moving decisively away from short-term project cycles – and for multi-stakeholder coordination platforms that connect national agencies with subnational authorities and local communities.

Regional and global stakeholders are asked to facilitate South–South learning, support policy alignment and technical harmonisation across countries, and champion the localisation agenda in post-2030 DRR and climate resilience frameworks. Regional bodies have a specific role to play in promoting cross-border coordination and multi-hazard early warning networks.

Donors and financing institutions face perhaps the most direct call for change. The roadmap asks them to shift from project-based to programmatic and flexible funding, invest in anticipatory and risk-informed financing mechanisms – including forecast-based financing and parametric insurance – and prioritise equity in funding decisions, ensuring that women-led and community-based organisations have direct access to resources. Results-based investment linked to measurable improvements in inclusivity and resilience, rather than outputs, is the standard the roadmap sets.

Evidence from the frontline

GNDR’s Strategic Roadmap is grounded in evidence generated by local civil society through global surveys, national multi-stakeholder dialogues, and regional consultations. Across diverse contexts – floods, droughts, cyclones, heatwaves, and landslides – members consistently identified five structural barriers:

1. Limited access to localised, people-centred risk information

2. Weak integration between early warning and early action mechanisms

3. Inadequate recognition of local and indigenous knowledge systems

4. Fragmented governance and institutional silos

5. Insufficient, inflexible, and short-term financing for local actors

At the same time, members documented effective local practices: community-led monitoring, trusted communication networks, women-led preparedness mechanisms, citizen science, and locally defined action protocols. Yet each are functioning solutions that remain marginal to national and global systems.

What needs to change: Five policy shifts

The Strategic Roadmap calls for a fundamental reorientation of early warning systems through five policy-critical shifts:

1. From hazard data to people-centred risk information
   Early warning systems must integrate scientific data with local knowledge, social vulnerability, and exposure analysis—co-produced with communities at risk.
2. From early warning to anticipatory action
   Warnings must trigger predefined, locally led actions, supported by clear mandates, financing, and accountability before impacts escalate.
3. From centralised control to shared governance
   Local CSOs and at-risk groups must have formal roles in EWS governance, design, implementation, and evaluation—not ad-hoc consultation.
4. From isolated pilots to system-wide integration
   Proven local approaches should be institutionalised within national systems and funded for scale and sustainability.
5. From project funding to sustained local investment
   Donors must move beyond short-term, output-driven funding and invest in long-term local capacity, leadership, and systems strengthening.

The role of policymakers and donors

Localised early warning systems will not emerge organically. They require deliberate policy choices. Governments must embed localisation within national EWS strategies, legal frameworks, and budgets. Donors and multilateral agencies must align financing with local leadership – providing direct, flexible, and predictable resources to local actors.

Crucially, accountability for Early Warnings for All must be measured not only by coverage, but by who controls the system, who acts on the warning, and who benefits.

A defining moment

The coming years represent a decisive moment for global disaster risk governance. Climate impacts are accelerating, inequalities are deepening, and the cost of inaction is rising. Continuing to invest in early warning systems that exclude local actors will only reproduce existing failures  – at greater scale.

GNDR’s Strategic Roadmap for Localising Early Warning Systems offers a different path: one where communities are not passive recipients of warnings, but active leaders of risk reduction and early action.

Early warning for all is not achievable without local power. The choice facing policymakers is clear: reinforce centralised systems that fail the most at-risk, or invest in locally led solutions that save lives, livelihoods, and dignity.