Anticipatory Action (AA) initiatives, partnerships and implementation has gained significant momentum within the humanitarian sector in recent years. Building on the successful AA piloting efforts of recent years, the vision now is to scale up and mainstream anticipatory action as an approach across DRM processes and frameworks. The shift from a reactive to a more anticipatory management of risk needs to be backed up with sufficient resources. This requires a greater technical exchange and coordination between initiatives and instruments being set up by government, development and humanitarians at global, regional or national level. Catalyzing a more effective disaster response requires integrated crisis monitoring and disaster risk financing systems where funds are released and anticipatory action implemented in a coordinated way according to aligned plans. Partners would act in a harmonized way, not necessarily all for the same events or at the same time but reflecting their specific mandates, relative strengths and capacity. There is a growing number of initiatives that are supporting collective learning, coordination and further partnership in AA such as the Anticipation Hub, Risk-Informed Early Action Partnership and the Crisis Lookout Coalition. 

Session contributing to Anticipatory Action Area of Common Concern will explore a number of areas including: 

• How humanitarian and development partners can strengthen collaborative and coordinated approaches to anticipatory action at all levels? What kind of partnership and learning will be required to strengthen the nexus? Anticipatory action represents an important opportunity to put in practice the ‘humanitarian-development’ nexus and ensure that development investments are protected and can respond to shocks.

• What is needed to strengthen collective learning? Collective learning is another top priority with further evidence needed on the effectiveness of different types of anticipatory actions.