In the face of climate change, development and humanitarian practitioners increasingly recognize the need to anticipate and manage multiple, concurrent risks. One prominent example of this increasing focus on anticipation is the rapid growth of Forecast-based Financing (FbF), in particular within Red Cross and Red Crescent (RCRC). To evaluate how anticipatory efforts managed multiple compounding risks during the COVID-19 pandemic, we examine how 14 RCRC Societies adapted their Early Action Protocols to COVID-19. Though many National Societies successfully adapted to the onset of the additional hazard of COVID-19, we find that multi-hazard risk management can be improved by: proactively developing guidelines that enable rapid adaptation of existing plans; more flexible funding mechanisms; surge capacity to provide additional human resources; and increasing local capacity and ownership for implementation to ensure supplies, skills, and decision-making authority are available when communication or travel is restricted. These findings align with wider recommendations for improving development, humanitarian, and climate adaptation practice towards local capacity and agency. They also add urgency to broader calls for more flexible disaster financing and more practitioner-oriented investment in climate risk and multi-hazard management.

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<p>The Red Cross Red Cresent is among the organizations with the longest and most extensive experience with forecast-based action. We present the findings of recently-published research based on interviews with 139 stakeholders involved in Red Cross Red Crescent (RCRC) AA programs in 18 countries. We find that the organizaitonal benefits of forecast-based ation include capacity building, more proactive operations, and expedited humanitarian response. Forecast-based action can also help to overcome common challenges in climate services by providing a framework and decision-making and resources for early action. Despite these benefits, AA practitioners struggle with challenges common to climate services, development, and humanitarian aid, including local project ownership, capacity and infrastructure, integration with existing systems, data availability, forecast uncertainty, and monitoring and evaluation. We conclude that forecast-based action systems can only be sustainble if they address these perennial challenges and focus on building capacity and ownership. Furthermore, donors can play a major role in facilitating these shifts by providing funding designed to support long-term multi-stakeholder processes.</p>