Les partenaires de GNDR et REAP cartographient le système d'alerte précoce

Earlier this year, GNDR and partners of the Risk-informed Early Action Partnership (REAP) came together to map the early warning system they are all part of, and to look at how their contributions connect as one system. The initiative brought together a diverse group, from the organisations that set global standards and finance early warning and early action, through to the civil society actors closest to at-risk communities. For a day, these partners worked as equals, each holding one piece of a system none of them sees as a whole, and asked together: what does it take for a warning to become action, and where can partners strengthen the connections that make that possible?

Exploring the relationships that underpin early warnings

Rather than treating early warning as a delivery chain that ends when a message reaches people, the initiative used systems thinking to look at the relationships underneath it. It looked at the flows of information, trust, resources and authority that decide whether communities can genuinely lead and act on the systems meant to protect them. The group placed local agency at the centre of the map and traced the connections that strengthen or weaken it.

The work comes at a significant moment. The Early Warnings for All initiative has reached its midpoint, and while more than sixty per cent of countries now report having a multi-hazard early warning system, fewer than one third report having local plans to act on warnings. Coverage is growing, and the capacity to act on it has yet to catch up. This mapping is a contribution to understanding, in practical terms, what co-developing early warning with communities would actually require.

The shape of the system

The map surfaced four feedback loops that shape the system:

• the trust and learning that lets warnings improve over time;
• the funding cycles that can either build or undercut the relationships warnings depend on;
• the underestimation of local capacity that keeps communities and local actors outside the design of the systems meant to serve them;
• and the trusted local relationships that already turn warnings into action, yet remain largely unrecognised and unresourced.

Read together, the mapping points to three leverage points where partners, working together, could shift the conditions for the whole system: 

• Naming the absence of local connection as a structural issue 
• Building the architecture through which learning flows back across levels 
• Recognising and resourcing what already works. 

One finding stood out particularly. Partners who see this system from very different vantage points independently recognised the same connections and the same gaps, which suggests these patterns are structural rather than a matter of perspective.

An evolving system and project

This initiative is the beginning of a shared conversation and endeavour for more collaboration and unusual partnership. The map is a living one, still growing as partners add to it and challenge it. What comes next is to try things together: to form partnerships across the usual boundaries and test, in practice, where these connections can be strengthened..

You can find more information about the full findings, the four loops and three leverage points, and the ways partners can engage in a summary report. The barriers to localising early warning are explored further in the FCDO-funded Strategic Roadmap for Localising EWS, prepared by GNDR and our members.

En savoir plus

• Read the summary report
• Explore the Strategic Roadmap for Localising EWS