Charting new waters: Funding for Anticipatory Action in a shifting humanitarian system

Time

15:45 - 17:00 CET

About

Despite its proven benefits-from protecting vulnerable communities to saving donor resources-Anticipatory Action remains critically underfunded, consistently undermining its potential scale. AA still accounts for only a small fraction of overall crisis financing (CDP 2024) and relies heavily on a limited number of donors and constrained humanitarian contingency mechanisms in a changing humanitarian landscape. Yet there is clear momentum: modellable risks lend themselves well to pre-arranged financing (PAF), and over the past five years, PAF for AA has grown from 0.2 to nearly 1%. The challenge and opportunity ahead is to stretch every dollar pre-arranged for AA and to increase the number of people protected from predictable disasters through innovative financing solutions that leverage humanitarian budgets for growth, scale, sustainability, and impact.

This session moves beyond highlighting the gap to exploring practical, systemic solutions. We will mobilize key experts to share tangible tools and innovative financial ideas for securing additional and sustained AA funding across three critical pathways: national ownership, development/climate financing, and private risk transfer. This will culminate in a high-engagement Fishbowl Discussion where panelists and participants collaboratively identify the missing policy commitments or institutional reforms to fundamentally shift how AA is financed.