Blog: Early money for early action in Timor-Leste?
By Florence Pichon, Climate Centre, Bangkok
What happens when an early warning is sounded and heard but there’s no money to act?
With improved forecasting technology, people can anticipate disasters and mitigate their impacts, protecting lives, livelihoods and key infrastructure. But it’s well established that early-warning systems need to be backed up by proper financing strategies that can disburse money to the right people in the right place at the right time.
Without money behind them, early warnings are just noise.
Through UNEP under the Green Climate Fund’s project Enhancing early warning systems to build greater resilience to hydro-meteorological hazards in Timor-Leste, which the Timor-Leste Red Cross (CVTL) plays an important role in, the country is now benefitting from better forecasts and is trialing new forms of Anticipatory Action.
As part of this initiative, the Climate Centre and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization today publish a new report (and accompanying policy brief) examining the potential of a special financing mechanism for Anticipatory Action in Timor-Leste – one that can reach the remote corners of the country where the most vulnerable people live.
Our study found that Timor Leste’s Civil Protection Authority (CPA), responsible for disaster risk reduction and emergency response, would benefit strongly from such a fund.
It would be separate from the ministry’s annual budget, which is spent on DRR and small-scale disaster response, and it would be one of the first of its kind anywhere in the world.
For bilateral donors and climate funds aiming to support nation-wide Anticipatory Action in Timor Leste, topping-up the fund would be an obvious entry point.
‘Anticipatory action is crucial’
Emidia Belo, CVTL Disaster Management Coordinator, says: “Anticipatory action is crucial, and allocating financial resources in advance will reduce climate-related impacts in communities.
“The CVTL will adhere to the IFRC’s strategies and road map for risk management and Anticipatory Action and support its mainstreaming into health programming.”
By financing both Anticipatory Action and early response, a new contingency fund would create continuity between actions before and after an early warning is sounded, and make it more feasible to access disaster-affected populations to provide relief.
The government of Timor-Leste already has a national fund that has been instrumental in major disaster response in the past, but it takes time (weeks rather than days, the study found), and local disaster managers say a new contingency fund specifically for Anticipatory Action would be much faster.
When warnings precede hazards by a few days or even just hours, a much more decentralized and responsive mechanism is required.
CPA President Ismael da Costa Babo said: “To access national contingency finance, sending official requests and conducting assessments take time. If we had our own fund in hand, it would be easier to manage and we can be much faster.”
Alongside creating a CPA-level contingency fund, our study concluded that there is a need to integrate Anticipatory Action into DRR policy and standard operating protocols, expanding it from pilots and institutionalizing it in planning for all disaster response.
Timor-Leste’s new early-warning systems could feed into the world’s most advanced Anticipatory Action mechanisms at the national level. The ambitions are high, but based on our conversations with CPA officials and key stakeholders, the goals are not only attainable but necessary to ensure early warnings are connected to action.
Flood response and evacuation in Dili after Cyclone Seroja in April 2021 – the third-deadliest on record in the Australian region. The storm brought historic flooding and landslides to southern Indonesia and Timor-Leste. (Library photo: CVTL)