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EWS are dominated by international donors not only in terms of funding, but also in terms of whom they address and involve in the design and implementation process. The outreach of EWS will increase the sense of ownership and responsibility for its maintenance, which brings a more balanced approach addressing local communities, district and national governments, as well as international aid donors. In order to be sustainable, all aspects of the design and implementation of EWS require the substantial involvement of stakeholders at local and national levels.
The first early warning systems, or EWS, were set up in the 1970’s mainly to service donor and UN food aid institutions, many of which are still mainly serving this purpose. Since the majority of EWS were funded by international donors with the objective to provide information to international aid agencies, very complex systems have been designed requiring resources that go far beyond the investment capacity of national governments.
When designing Early Warning Systems the most important points are therefore:
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I. To ensure sustainability of Early Warning Systems. Awareness of who will eventually be running the EWS and what resources that are available to them.
II. To ensure that monitoring, processing and communication correlates with the needs and resources of the local population. Warrant participation of local communities in the production and verification of information about perceived risks and especially the selection of appropriate communication media and dissemination strategies.
III. To support the maintenance of effective Early Warning Systems. Institutionalize collaboration and coordination mechanisms across the levels of community, district (or appropriate local government unit) and nation, and between investment and policy following the principle of subsidiarity.
IV. Drought Phases:
Looking in the Past to predict the Future.
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V. All warning systems are based to some extent on how the observed phenomenon behaves in general. Models are used to increase understanding of the observed past and present situations in order to predict what is most likely to happen next.
VI. The drought cycle by Toulmin (1994) describing the impact of meteorological drought on pastoral systems is widely used as a standard model to distinguish the different phases of a drought cycle. Toulmin (1994) sub-divides drought cycles into three phases based on the relationship between forage production, livestock numbers, grain price and livestock price.
The graph shows typical effects for various levels of drought, which can also be used in reverse as indicators of the current level of drought. The impact of drought varies from place to place and especially the impact on livestock markets is discussed controversially.
Monitoring situation and changes to predict the onset of drought and vulnerability to Drought:
In order to have timely and effective warnings in place, the following questions must be addressed:
1. Which phenomenon do you want to generate information about?
2. What is the purpose and concept of the monitored variables?
3. How can data be collected?
4. Which indicators can be used?
5. Which organisations are already engaged in that field and could provide data and/ or information?
Which phenomenon do you want to generate information about?
To be able to generate accurate and timely warnings, as well as an understanding of the reliability of a forecast, it is essential to know which phenomenon one wants to make forecasts about. All warning systems, however simple they may be, are based on previous information of how a phenomenon behaves.
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Models of the chosen phenomenon are used for a better understanding of the observed past and present situation, as well as a way to predict what is most likely to happen next. As part of their disaster reduction strategy, many countries have developed early warning systems (EWS) by integrating information from global weather systems along with regional and national observations in order to provide warnings of the imminent onset of a meteorological drought.
However, since pastoral drought cannot be equated with meteorological drought, it is necessary to complement meteorological forecasts with the monitoring of parameters relevant to pastoral production systems.
What are the purpose and the underlying concept of the monitoring this phenomenon?
The general progression of droughts in Africa schematized in the prediction model of the drought cycle, suggests that effective EWS for pastoral drought must make use of different methods to generate multiple indicators and indices. These include methods to monitor meteorological and agro-meteorological drought with the intention to monitor the onset of meteorological and agricultural drought.
These kinds of variables could also be conceptualized as the endowments in place. Since they do not indicate clearly how various groups will be affected and who is most vulnerable, they can also not indicate whether a meteorological drought is giving rise to a pastoral drought.
Monitoring socioeconomic phenomenon, such as markets or livestock production, human health and nutrition, will help to identify the onset of pastoral drought. In addition they help to identify the most vulnerable groups since they determine not only the endowments but also the entitlements.
How can data be collected?
The introduction of techniques such as satellite based earth observation and computer based simulation models allows the development of immensely complex prediction models of the physics of the global weather system producing detailed meteorological forecasts for the whole globe. In order to forecast pastoral droughts these satellite based models need to be complemented with ground-based data collection and monitoring.
Which indicators can be used?
No single indicator or index can identify precisely the slow onset of an emerging drought and predict the spatial or temporal extent and the severity of the event. Effective EWS for pastoral drought therefore must make use of different methods to generate multiple indicators and indices.
These include methods to monitor meteorological and agro-meteorological drought variables such as precipitation and evaporation, as well as hydrological variables like stream flow, groundwater levels, reservoir and lake levels and soil moisture. These can be combined with indicators on socioeconomic variables such changing market prices and changing market offers concerning species, ages and sex of livestock sold on markets as well as production variables indicating changes in livestock production such as, livestock mortality rate, kidding rate etc.
Monitoring for Pastoral Resilience:
The main focus in drought management needs to support pastoral livelihoods in their resilience strategies to cope with, adapt to and minimize the impact of drought. Because drought is such an important aspect of pastoral livelihoods, there is ultimately no clear boundary between promoting drought resilience and general good practice in pastoral development.
In order to support these activities a solid database recording all aspects of pastoral livelihoods concerning the management of good pastoral practices is needed. Establishing a monitoring for pastoral resilience is therefore necessary to provide strong evidence base upon which appropriate policy and programming decisions can be made.
This can be considered as part of drought management activities, but it also becomes increasingly important as pastoral systems are profoundly changing in response to a changing environment. A reliable and detailed account of the trends and processes which are now profoundly altering pastoral livelihood systems is often lacking as most current research provides only a ‘snapshot’ of a situation affecting a certain group at a certain time, rather than exploring how pastoral systems are changing as a whole.
Any approach to developing a database on pastoral resilience needs to start with an assessment of available data and the identification of knowledge gaps. This can be taken as a starting point to do both.
1. Invest in capacity building of national statistic offices and other involved agencies to include pastoral issues in their surveys and report them to a centralized pastoral databases; and
2. To invest in processes and techniques for additional data collection.
This approach is currently applied in East Africa by the ROSP Initiative and in West Africa by the SIPSA programme. A general issue when developing a comprehensive database is how to analyse and communicate the results of the data collection, since it covers a wide range of areas.
The ROSP Initiative aims to produce an annual report on the Status of Pastoralism (ROSP) to communicate the results. The SIPSA programme on the other hand, is opting for demand oriented information products as well as a web-based interface, which allows making queries according to a bundle of selection criteria.
The ROSP Initiative:
The Report on the Status of Pastoralism (ROSP) is a policy-oriented research project initiated by Oxfam as part of the Regional Pastoral Programme in the Horn and Eastern Africa. This project is designed to improve the quality and accessibility of information on pastoralism in Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda.
The first Regional Partners meeting of ROSP gathering participants from Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda, representing government institutions, NGOs, and research institutes took place in October 2006. This meeting discussed the content and focus for the first ROSP report, the institutional structures and commitments necessary. It was agreed that a major output of these collaborations will be the production of a periodic ‘status’ report, which will be published annually.
When verifiable and accurate statistics are not available then the gap shall be filled using case histories, for example:
1. Case histories and stories of changed livelihood strategies by pastoralists;
2. Case histories and stories of experience of destitution by pastoralists;
3. Accounts by pastoralists of the direction in which events are moving, what are the causes, and what can be done.
Such stories should be retained when the more quantitative information is available online. In addition to reporting on the status of pastoralism within the region, the report will document the state of pastoral data. Thus, the report will consolidate what is currently known as well as identify gaps in knowledge and information.
For analysing the trends and processes affecting pastoral livelihoods, it is envisaged that a minimum dataset should include indicators on the following 6 areas:
1. Pastoral economy
2. Social changes in pastoral society
3. Access to natural resources
4. Drought
5. Conflict
6. Markets
The SIPSA programme:
The elaboration of an Information System for pastoralism in the Sahel entitled Systemed Informationsur le Pastoralisme au Sahel (SIPSA) was initiated in 2002, when the FAO based LEAD Initiative in partnership with PPZS implemented of a research programme on the interactions between pastoral systems and the environment in Mauritania, Burkina Faso, Senegal and Chad, which represent the 6 countries with the highest percentage of pastoral people in the CILSS region.
The programme has established a network of national focal points acting at the center of National Coordination Committees. These National Coordination Committees are coordinated and facilitated on a regional level by the Regional Technical Coordination Committee consisting of the PPZS, AGHRYMET and the FAO LEAD Initiative.
Together they have agreed upon a prototype of a pastoral database. This prototype has been put into practice and tested in Senegal. Starting from an ecological environmentalist perspective, the programme soon realized the importance of integrating aspects of conflict, vulnerability and pastoral livelihoods into their approach.
Following are thematic areas that have been identified for monitoring:
1. Vegetation
2. Land cover and land use
3. Meteorology
4. Hydrology
5. Sanitary situation
6. Migration patterns and mobility of livestock
7. Demographic data
8. Infrastructure
9. Market
10. Agricultural by-products and residue available for livestock feeding
11. Household economy
12. Laws and legal texts on pastoral rights
13. Administration and partners
Data Processing:
Although the process of Early Warning begins with data collection, it is critical to keep in mind that the final goal is to process the data into information so that a timely and understandable early warning system can be communicated.
When processing data to information it is important to keep in mind that:
I. Data needs to be processed to meaningful information:
Too often raw data is handled as if it were information and is then included in reports without setting the numbers into a relative context and providing proper interpretation. There is a difference between data and information. Data is numbers and facts, while information is data that is processed, analyzed, and interpreted.
The data of an assessed situation can be processed into meaningful information if it is placed in a. known context (e.g., comparison to last year/ to mean average/ or median; increase or decrease in per cent).
There are three steps to data processing. The first step for early warning is to assess the situation. The second step is to analyse a dataset of past years in order to generate knowledge of the average data values in a normal situation. This average or normal value can then be compared with the data of the present situation and meaningful information about the situation can be formulated.
In a third step, the information generated about the past and present situation can be analysed to make forecasts about the probable future situation and to indicate trends. Since the aim of the Early Warning System (EWS) is to make forecasts about risks, information needs to be generated about both the probability of the occurrence of a hazard and the vulnerability of various groups to the hazard. Models of hazards (i.e., drought cycle) and vulnerability analysis are tools that enable analysts to make forecasts about risks.
II. The probability of the forecast needs to estimate:
The aim of processing monitored data for early warning is to have a clear statement about the risk of a disaster like a drought induced famine. Since a 100 per cent reliable warning system does not exist for any hazard, it needs to be precise about the probability of the forecast.
Hazard warnings are accompanied by various scientific uncertainties about their timing of onset, magnitude and destructive potential. Uncertainty is often expressed by forecasters in terms of probabilities (i.e., the probability of the worsening of a phase). Another possibility would be to estimate a most likely scenario and a worst case scenario.
III. Warnings need to be comparable among different regions
A standardized classification system of situations identifying stage, scale and extent of drought stress, probable trends and its impact on human lives could make the situation analysis and the forecast comparable among different regions. However, depending on the country, institutions involved, and persons doing the analysis, classification systems differ.
Currently there are a numerous ways in which food security and humanitarian situations are defined and classified. Agencies such as Oxfam and World Bank, FAO GIEWS, FEWS NET, and many others have developed different systems for classifying food security crisis situations.
Communication of Information:
Communications in early warning systems should be targeted to the specific needs of the intended user group. In general one has to distinguish between the user needs of high level policy-makers, decision-makers of international project and programmes, as well as the donor community as opposed to individual farmers/herder or local groups associations.
In order to reach the broad range of users, a balance between traditional and advanced communication channels needs to be created using a mixture of mass media and selective formal and informal communication channels.
This requires the ability to:
I. Assess existing forms for information exchange of various groups
Understand the flow of information, knowledge gaps and the demand for information.
II. Ensure access to the information (time and place)
Distributing information without the internet
III. Communicate information effectively
Developing a sustainable communication network
IV. Communicate both on a regularly bases as well as on the occasion of alert or alarm warning
Creating an Alarm System
V. Disseminate information, which is easily understandable
Verbal communication partnered with the media
VI. Information needs to be reliable and traceable
Establishing a reliable source
Objective:
Distribute information to target groups according to their needs who, receives what kind of information (from whom), when and how?