Introduction - Reducing Disaster: Early Warning Systems for Climate Change - page 14

This topic makes clear that failure to “reduce disaster” has not resulted simply
from a lack of interest, information, or predictive skill. A case in point is the massive
failure to prevent the 2011 famine in the Horn of Africa (Ververs 2012 ). The United
Nations declared famine in Somalia on July 20, 2011. As a result of drought, nearly
13 million people were in need of humanitarian assistance by September 2011
(FEWSNET 2011 ). But scientists had long warned of possible drought (UNEP
2011 ). The drying trend in East Africa has been linked to changing sea surface tem-
peratures (Williams and Funk 2011 ). FEWSNET and the FSNWG predicted, at least
6 months in advance, that there was going to be a food security crisis. Increasingly
urgent warnings accumulated for months before famine was fi nally declared in July,
and the humanitarian assistance mobilized (Bailey 2013 ). A Chatham House report
(Bailey 2013 ) concludes, “Famine early warning systems have a good track record
of predicting food crises but a poor track record of triggering early action.”
Decades ago, Amartya Sen ( 1981 ) noted that “Famines often take place in situ-
ations of moderate to good food availability, without any signifi cant decline of food
supply per head.” Sen theorized that, “famines depend on people's ability to com-
mand food through legal means available in the society… .” Famines occur when
there are big shifts in an individual's or group's ability to access food. Sharp move-
ments in exchange entitlements resulted in starvation for several occupation groups
in Bengal during 1942 and 1943.
Likewise, early warning systems often fail not because of lack of information or
technical ability, but because individuals do not have access to information or
because they do not, or cannot, respond. As with famine, the ability to both access
and respond to early warning information depends on the “legal, political, economic
and social characteristics of the society in question and the person's position in it.”
The poor are often the most vulnerable to hazards, but also lack most critical
pieces of information. “Living on 99 cents a day means you have limited access to
information - newspaper, television, and topics all cost money - and so you often
just don't know certain facts that the rest of the world takes as given,” write Banerjee
and Dufl o ( 2012 ) in Poor Economics . To be effective, information from early warning
systems must come from credible sources, must say something that people don't
already know and do it in an attractive or simple way (Banerjee and Dufl o 2012 ).

Box 1.2 Possible ways to improve warning delivery and encourage early
action by users and governments:

- Encourage private sector investment and involvement

- Encourage partnerships with the media to foster accountability and action

- Encourage women's leadership and participation in early warning systems

- Develop climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction forums at

the community level