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For over 30 years, the interagency FEWS NET team has been on the cutting edge of drought early warning science, informing food security outlooks that save lives and livelihoods in high-risk countries.
In 2018, hunger and the specter of famine continue to loom large on the global stage, contributing to severe malnutrition; stunted, wasted, and low-birthweight children; poor health; and lost productivity (FAO et al. 2017). Roughly 1 in 10 people are undernourished (821 million) and chronic hunger has increased substantially since 2015 due to the combined effects of poverty, conflict, and a more extreme climate (FAO et al. 2017). According to estimates from the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET; www.fews.net), more than 83 million people faced crisis conditions requiring food assistance in 2018-75% more than in 2015 (FEWS NET 2018). Fortunately, international aid agencies, national disaster risk management systems, and nongovernmental organizations (Table 1) can often provide effective humanitarian relief by identifying and targeting the most food-insecure populations for assistance. In 2017, the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Office of Food For Peace (USAID FFP) reached 70 million beneficiaries with $3.6 billion in food aid, cash transfers, or food vouchers (FFP 2018). Accurate and timely early warning can increase the productivity and efficiency of this assistance, helping to ensure that finite aid resources are directed to the right people before there is widespread malnutrition and starvation. Numerous national and international early warning systems (Table 2) support the early identification of emerging droughts and food crises. Originally formed in response to the Sahel droughts of 1984 and 1985 (Brown 2008), more than 30 years of continuous refinement has allowed FEWS NET to develop into one of the most sophisticated monitoring systems.1 Within FEWS NET, an interagency and interdisciplinary team has developed a cutting-edge Drought Early Warning System (DEWS) that anticipates and tracks climate-related hazards and shocks (Table 3). This paper provides, for the first time, an up-to-date description of the strategies and components of the current FEWS NET DEWS, along with several real-world examples demonstrating how this system is helping to save lives and secure livelihoods.
Table 1. A nonexhaustive list of donors and implementers of humanitarian assistance.
[Table omitted: See PDF]
Table 2. A nonexhaustive list of agencies providing food security...