Anticipatory action for drought in Southern Madagascar: Calibrating trigger systems with historical impact data
Madagascar El Nino 2023-2024
Southern Madagascar’s Grand Sud is among the most drought-affected regions in Africa, where rural communities face recurrent crop failures, pressure on rangelands, and chronic food insecurity, locally described as “kéré” crises. These slow-onset droughts are shaped by climate variability, including El Niño events, and intensified by high levels of poverty, limited infrastructure, and degraded natural resources. For many years, humanitarian assistance has been predominantly reactive, reaching communities only after impacts were severe and households have already exhausted coping strategies, highlighting the need for anticipatory action.
Madagascar El Nino 2023-2024 - a project participant living in Bekily district, in southern Madagascar show his poultry supported by FAO project
Since 2020, the Government of Madagascar, the General Directorate of Meteorology (DGM), the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the World Food Programme, and partners have collaborated to establish an anticipatory action (AA) protocol. The protocol uses a forecast-based trigger model to enable support, in the form of pre-agreed actions, to be released in the “window of opportunity” between a drought forecast and the full manifestation of impacts. By 2022 - 23, the drought trigger mechanism had been revised and operationalized, integrating seasonal climate forecasts, observation indicators, and vulnerability indicators. Seasonal climate forecasts, including El Niño-related signals, are monitored alongside observed anomalies in rainfall, soil moisture, vegetation indices (NDVI), agricultural stress indicators, and short-term drought indices such as the standard precipitation index (SPI-3) and soil-moisture anomalies. Market and household vulnerability indicators, including staple food prices, local stocks, and food consumption scores, are also reviewed to capture both hazard conditions and evolving vulnerability.
During calibration workshops, Food Security and Livelihoods partners compared indicator behavior against historical drought impacts, agricultural production shortfalls, livestock condition, and food security outcomes to establish thresholds that reflect actual impacts on livelihoods and food security, rather than meteorological anomalies alone. This ensured that trigger levels corresponded to observed agricultural and livelihood impacts, moving the system beyond hazard-only early warning to a livelihood-impact-oriented trigger system grounded in observed drought consequences. The trigger mechanism follows a three-stage decision ladder of monitoring, alert, and anticipatory action. A composite trigger score is calculated at the district level, and once a district crosses the threshold of ≥ 55%, partners can activate predefined measures. This threshold marks the point where deteriorating climatic conditions and rising vulnerability converge, ensuring that activation is based on meaningful agricultural and food-security stress rather than on isolated anomalies or statistical “red flags” in a single indicator.
Mozambique El Nino 2023-2024 - Farmer with inputs through the E-voucher implemented by FAO project
Once activated, the AA intervention package in the Grand Sud is delivered ahead of peak drought impacts and typically combines complementary measures.
In the 2023/24 activation in the districts of Betroka, Betioky, and Tsihombe, the trigger was reached in July 2023, based on forecasts pointing to below average rainfall affecting the agricultural season starting in October. The Anticipatory Action Technical Working Group confirmed activation, and anticipatory actions were rolled out from late 2023 through mid-2024. The activation included:
- Dissemination of early warning messages co-produced by the National Office of Risk and Disaster Management (BNGRC) and sectoral partners to inform communities about rainfall deficits and recommended agricultural decisions (such as prioritizing drought-resistant crops).
- Anticipatory cash transfers and drought-tolerant agricultural inputs for vulnerable households, allowing them to secure food and invest in climate-smart planting before the lean season peaks.
This anticipatory action model has shown promising outcomes. An evaluation undertaken with FAO and government partners found strong evidence of impact. Households receiving AA reported improvements in food consumption scores (FCS) of about 3 points (≈12%), a reduction in the consumption-based coping strategy index (rCSI) of 7 points (≈34%), and gains of around 3 points (≈8%) in Resilience Capacity Scores (RCS).
AA-supported households also changed their agricultural practices with 78% of them planting crops compared with 60% in the control group, and 38% purchased and applied fertilizer compared to 12% in the control group. This indicates that early warning, training, and inputs enabled farmers to maintain or adapt production despite the drought. Most households spent the cash distributed as part of this package primarily on food (≈81%), and 77% reported that the assistance arrived in time to help them cope with or mitigate impacts.
Institutionally, Madagascar’s experience shows how AA is becoming embedded in national risk management systems. FAO has supported the National Disaster Management Agency in integrating AA into national and regional contingency plans, and national AA frameworks are being updated to formalize monitoring and evaluation components. Regionally, FAO’s work with the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) on the Multi-hazard Early Warning for All Action Plan for Africa and on El Niño-related AA frameworks aligns country-level practice with broader initiatives such as Early Warnings for All (EW4All).
From a UNDRR perspective, the Grand Sud drought AA system demonstrates how systematically collected historical disaster impact information on yields, food security, and markets can be used to calibrate multi-indicator triggers that better represent real livelihood stress. It also shows that investments in interoperable datasets for hazardous events, disaster impact and risk information, which capture is enabled by comprehensive disaster tracking systems like DELTA Resilience and consistent with the Global Disaster-related Statistics Framework (GDRSF), could strengthen the timing, effectiveness, and quality of early action. Integrating AA into early-warning systems, national/sectoral disaster risk reduction/management strategies, and national contingency plans advances the Sendai Framework’s Priority 4 by reinforcing preparedness and enabling early, targeted support for slow-onset hazards.
Lastly, anticipatory action for drought in Southern Madagascar shows that strengthening national data ecosystems and integrating historical impact information, including disaggregated sectoral data on crop losses, hazardous-event parameters, and impacts on productivity and food security, into trigger design is not only a technical exercise, but a practical investment that enables governments and partners to act earlier, more accurately, and more equitably when drought risk begins to rise.
References
- FAO. (2025). Presentation delivered at Bonn Technical Forum 2025.
- FAO. 2024. Anticipatory action: Annual report 2023. Rome. https://fscluster.org/sites/default/files/2024-11/cd2966en.pdf
- World Food Programme. (2025). Anticipating the impact of drought in Madagascar: Key findings from the Anticipatory Action activation in the Grand Sud, 2023/24. https://reliefweb.int/report/madagascar/anticipating-impact-drought-madagascar-key-findings-anticipatory-action-activation-grand-sud-202324