Andy Wheatley and Ahmad Kazouini, International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)

Juliet Parker, the director of ALNAP, the global network for humanitarian learning, meets Ahmad Kazouini, water & habitat coordinator for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Somalia, and Andy Wheatley, ICRC's African regional anticipatory action adviser, in the second episode of the new Learning Curve podcast series. With such a good body of evidence supporting anticipatory action and many good experiences, why is the humanitarian sector struggling to make a step change in mainstream practices? Juliet also asks Andy and Ahmad about their experiences of working on the Somalia El Nino flood response.

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Transcript

Juliet Parker (JP): Welcome to the Learning Curve. My name is Juliet Parker, and I'm the director of ALNAP, the learning network for the humanitarian sector. During this podcast series, we'll be taking the opportunity to talk to a range of people across the sector about what the humanitarian sector would look like if we lived in a world based on learning.

We know the humanitarian sector is rich in learning, expertise, and knowledge, but that we're falling far short of really capitalising on that in order to improve on the performance of humanitarian action. 

So, I'm delighted to be joined today by Ahmad Kazouini, who's the water and habitat coordinator for ICRC in Somalia, and also Andy Wheatley, the ICRC regional anticipatory action advisor for Africa. Welcome both, and thank you very much for joining me. 

AW: Thanks. Great to be here. 

JP: Can you tell us a bit about your experience of working on the Somalia El Nino floods response and particularly with such a good body of evidence supporting anticipatory action now and loads of good experience, what were you able to do differently? 

Andy Wheatley (AW): Sure. Starting in June, July last year, we got indications of likely severe flooding for southern Somalia. We took a decision to pivot in August. I think that's the first instance where ICRC has undertaken an anticipatory action based approach at a whole of delegation level based on climate science to anticipate, prepare and respond to a crisis before it actually happened. What was really exciting and what was really different about that is having time to prepare. Something we rarely have in the humanitarian world. Two months to get our house in order: to take outreach, to understand who was doing what, and to begin the logistics chain, position, pre-position items, restock health centres and perhaps really interestingly and perhaps Ahmad can talk more about this, but looking to actually reinforce and protect water sources, so that those would continue to operate. 

Ahmad Kazouini (AK): Once we heard there was an El Nino, we received the information from the WASH cluster and other sources. You received the information that El Nino is coming. El Nino is coming to Somalia. The first issue that we faced was how to translate sometimes scientific information into realities. For the guys in the field, they wanted to know, ‘okay, is my city going to be flooded or not?’ This is the question they were asking. Some of those people were saying ‘no, no, this is not going to happen’. The trust of information is equally important as the information themselves. 

As a humanitarian organisation, we have a plan and our budgets are yearly. So, we have some planned projects going on and when we had the knowledge that there will be an El Nino, the first thing that we had to do is to say ‘okay, maybe we should not do this project’. In the International Committee of the Red Cross, we have the flexibility in moving the funds. And then it went to another question, it’s like what to do and where and this is where we went into what’s our mandate, where are the areas that have conflict and our mandate is more needed where other actors aren’t working and where should we work.

JP: How easy was it to persuade those within the organisation to make the shift? Was that easy?

AK: I think it was relatively easy. And surprisingly, since we are talking about learning, our head of delegation was here in 1997 and in the floods at that period. So, when he heard that there is a possibility of something similar, he was alarmed right away. And it's surprising and also always amazing how just living an event like that stuck in his mind. And then whenever we heard it's like, no, no, no, it's going to be serious. So, it didn't need a lot of convincing, to be honest. 

AW: And to add to that as well, I think that, so that's really about a risk appetite and a willingness to take risks, to step into an area of uncertainty and to have the confidence to move with that. I think people were very much on board with that. But it was with a sort of slight heavy heart, you know. ‘Oh no, okay, we've just geared up for X and now we have to shift to Y.’

JP: Yes, the reluctance to change a good plan is always very hard as an organisational inertia, isn't it? Why the uncertainty then? Andy, you mentioned there was uncertainty but if you have the information and you have the experience, and floods aren’t unusual in Somalia are they, so there’s a level of understanding there too, why is there still an uncertainty, do you think?

AW: Our comfort spot is in responding to events rather than predicting events. You know, foresight is challenging. You're not always going to get it right. That's when you face those challenges of turning the super tanker around and that's never easy.

AK: As humanitarian workers, it's more rewarding in many cases to respond to an emergency that happens. It's happening, you know it’s there, you get the funds, you do the action. We know in Somalia there will be climate hazards. We know they're gonna be acute water diarrhoea outbreaks and cholera outbreaks. We just don't know when, how acute and where, in exact location. So, preparing would make absolute sense for everybody, is being prepared and ready and having your stock. But then how would it look in your budget when you have this yearly budget, but you need to keep 200, 300,000 dollars worth of stuff that you might not use?

JP: That's one of the things I always find interesting about anticipatory action: is that we've been having these conversations for 15 years or more for definite. So, I wondered two things. Is there something that we're missing? Is there some information or evidence around the anticipatory action? Or is it, as you say, more of a cultural shift that we struggling to make within the sector? 

AK: The first thing is to understand this information, which is technical information to the field and what does it mean? So, one thing that is a little bit missing is trusted trigger information, like triggering elements.

But for this to be there, it needs to be linked to a risk registry. So, we need to have a risk registry and say: ‘Okay, when we are expecting the floods of like 80-90%, we need to activate these protocols. When we have this, we need to activate that.’ And I think this is something a little bit missing in the planning.

AW: I think what was really a game changer in the Somali situation was that two month preparedness window. We didn't have an additional budget for this response. It was a case of reallocating and refocusing existing activities, as we've said. That does take time. You know, the boring stuff around HR, around budget lines does take time and effort. That two month window meant we weren't constantly playing catch up. We had time to undertake logistical purchases. We could buy in non-stressed markets. We could move items using our standard road routes, rather than having to suddenly scramble for expensive planes and helicopters etc. And, so I think that anticipatory reaction approach, that does allow for more timely, respectful, engaged, but also much more cost effective, response. Having that period of calm to do the dull but important stuff, so that we're better prepared when the event happened was absolutely crucial. And it's crazy that we don't have that built into our mindset. And I guess that's a product of the funding model. I guess it's the product of the way we've always done things around here.

JP: That's one thing that always strikes me about anticipatory action is that it's so common sense. Advanced action and shifting priorities and, you know, acting on the information when you get it is a good way of programming. If we had, as a sector, based our decisions and actions on the learning that we already had over the last 10 years or so, where would we be now?

AW: You wouldn't design a system this way. In terms of what it would look like, it's the obvious stuff. I think it would be doing the dull, but important things, right: strengthening capacity, training, undertaking practice drills, having granular contingency plans that everyone knows and is aware of and is familiar with, having flexible funding that has, you know, crisis modifiers built in so that we can change direction, having that pre-agreed. Using downtime, using quiet periods to plan for the worst is obvious, and yet it's something we don't do. I think we get so down in our own trenches that then we suddenly look up and see a crisis approaching and it's almost too late. It's not on the horizon. It's right in front of our eyes. And suddenly we face the challenges that we're all familiar with and we all say shouldn't happen. It's blindingly obvious and yet somehow we miss that trick time and time again. 

JP: We seem to always position anticipatory action as being exceptional rather than being normal. And I guess that's the learning shift that we've been talking about. 

AK: What can really make us move is, and what is stopping us, is the lack of anticipatory action protocols that is linked with clear risk registry in the delegation, in the context space. This is something ICRC is working on. But the second thing is the flexibility of funding, because in anticipatory action, we will need to pre-position and prepare for events that might not happen. You cannot predict these events, you know, like El Nino was at the end of the year. I started preparing in August, so basically we dealt with what is left. What do we have left out of our money and how can we do it?

AW: I mean, there's this assumption that early warning will lead to early action and it often doesn't. And why is that? Is that about risk aversion? Is it about mindset? Is it about leadership? Is it about mindset and those informal and formal barriers that prevent organisations or individual organisations from moving forward. Am I allowed to do this? What are the repercussions? Will I be seen to be crying wolf? Is this acceptable? Is this part of our mandate? Are we allowed to operate here? Can we physically operate there? There's a lot of reasons not to do something, even when the evidence is there in front of you saying something needs to be done.

JP: So my final question, if the humanitarian sector is serious about learning, what is it that needs to happen now?

AW: We need to be smarter. We need to look at how to unlock that funding and see how there are actually mutual synergies there. Scaling up, getting beyond pilots. I guess the evidence is there. The evidence can always get better. And we need to use and learn from that evidence. But the risk appetite you know, needs to step up. A key issue is being willing to recognise and learn from failure rather than just spinning positive stories to hide our errors. We're never going to learn if we don't actually admit failure. Failure’s fine as long, as we don’t constantly repeat it. Recognising and identifying threats in slow time. Meaningful, dull, boring, but crucially important stuff like contingency planning, training, stocks, mechanisms, financial flexibility. And then, that community outreach, recognising that generating trust and a willingness to use information takes time, both internally and especially with communities. 

Then perhaps a final point around sort of operational flexibility and real-time adjustments. Often, you know, a plan is made and then we follow it blindly. Having the confidence and having the systems that allow you to flex and adjust and change location or the nature of the support is crucial, but I think it's something we rarely do.

AK: I think I will just add one element because I think Andy covered all of them. It’s short and concise: lessons learned report after we have done an intervention. Like nothing more than two pages, just for people to read, when they have anything, just to revisit and say ‘ok, that happened, we did this because of that’. That’s it. If you want to create and prepare a more elaborate report it would be awesome for people who want to really prepare themselves for it, but it will have way more audience if it’s between 2-3 pages and I think the field will read it, people will read it. Some simple tips of what happened, what are the lessons learned, I think it will be hugely helpful in the humanitarian sector.

JP: Thank you very much both of you for your time. It's really been a fascinating case study to talk about and I remain impressed by all the common sense learning that exists within the anticipatory action field, and interested in what it will take to make the culture change in order to really flip to the mainstream practicing and make anticipatory action less exceptional and more normal and as Ahmad said ‘smoother’, as part of our ongoing programme. Thank you both very much for your time. It's been an absolute pleasure to discuss with you on The Learning Curve.