Abstract
Mali faces increasingly severe conflict and crises, with important consequences for food security, water availability, poverty, and well-being. Within Mali and in other settings affected by recurring crises, there is growing interest in the potential of anticipatory action programming (AA) to provide early intervention before the onset of crisis. Anticipatory action (AA) is a relatively new type of aid distribution mechanism. Whereas humanitarian aid responds to shocks \textit{after} they occur, AA relies on early warning systems to identify impending threats such as floods, droughts, and other natural disasters. When an early warning is received, aid would be released \textit{after} the early warning but \textit{before} a shock occurs in order to mitigate effects of shocks. Its central motivation is the recognition that ``an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.'' In order to set up AA programming, actors agree to set aside funding to support AA programming, which is then released upon an agreed-upon trigger. Often, formal pacts are signed laying out how triggers work and when and what types of aid funding would be released upon an early warning. In the Malian context, we flag that nascent AA programming is typically associated with flood shocks, and so the focus of our research is on aid preferences related to flood shocks. This has also been the focus of early donor interest on developing AA programming.
Implementing and scaling AA programming necessitates collaboration and engagement with various local leaders; in fragile contexts, local leaders play crucial roles in overcoming ``last mile'' delivery challenges; resolving disputes over aid distribution; and providing insights into local conditions, vulnerabilities, and sources of resilience. Their involvement is vital for addressing any errors in early warning systems and supporting resilience where AA fails to protect vulnerable households. Little rigorous evidence exists globally on the views that these local leaders have on AA programming and what type of early aid could be useful to communities under what conditions, nor on how different ways of designing such programming might condition their support. Moreover, little rigorous evidence exists within the Malian context specifically on trust in and capacity of early warning systems for crises, how aid delivery systems might adapt to an AA approach, nor how local leaders who are currently involved in the delivery and distribution of humanitarian aid might react to reforms to the aid system. Considering how local leaders think about aid more broadly, there is also limited evidence on how they view transparency in the logistics around allocating aid, and discretion in decision-making over aid.
This project contributes to these evidence gaps by implementing an original survey of ~2,500 local leaders (including civil society representatives) across 125 communes in Mali. Our sample draws in a diverse sample of local leaders, deliberately selecting leaders who may currently participate in the delivery and distribution of humanitarian aid and those who may currently consider themselves to be more ``outsiders'' of the current aid distribution system. We also varied the sample geographically, by sampling from a wide range of regions in Mali, including those that have been more and less affected by shocks and conflict. These comprise local leaders at both the commune- and village-levels to understand how anticipatory action (AA) and humanitarian aid distribution works in practice from their perspectives; their preferences and priorities over AA vs. other forms of emergency assistance (hereafter, humanitarian aid); their views of discrepancy and transparency in aid distribution; as well as sources of local resilience present in their communities. Understanding local leaders' views about AA is important given increasing recognition in the donor community that provision of AA, compared to humanitarian aid, can reduce the overall need for aid, and thus is a critical component of crisis management policy. Our study analyzes the political economy of AA to shed light on what factors may serve as barriers to its wide acceptance in local communities. Given the importance of these questions for effective aid in Mali and in other fragile contexts, there is significant potential for insights from this research to inform donor policies and priorities.