Building resilience to El Niño-related drought: experiences in early warning and early action from Nicaragua and Ethiopia

Forecast-based drought early warning/early action has been hampered by both inadequate decision-making frameworks and a lack of appropriate funding mechanisms. Rural communities in Nicaragua and Ethiopia that have participated in resilience-building interventions of varying durations demonstrate the value of community-based actions informed by early warning, forecasts and drought management advice, both before and during the agricultural season. While drought affected all crops negatively, participants were better able to mitigate impacts, were more organised in accessing relief and recovered more effectively. These results are consistent with other research on the cost/benefit of anticipatory actions, use of climate services and appropriate drought management advice. They also confirm the importance of embedding short-term early action in long-term resilience-building. Despite this, formal systems, national and local, remain essentially unimplemented. Systems being developed at global level now need to be operationalised and translated into effective local drought management standard operating procedures for the most vulnerable.