Today it is our pleasure to introduce you to Jothiganesh (‘Jothi') Sundaram, a key figure in the World Food Programme’s efforts to mitigate climate and weather-related risks in the Asia-Pacific region. As one of the founding partners of REAP, WFP has committed to making 1 billion people safer from disasters by 2025 and is working with partners to significantly expand early action financing, improve early warning systems, and grow capacity to act on pre-identified risks. To date, WFP has worked in 36 countries to develop anticipatory action programmes alongside governments and other key humanitarian partners in Africa, Asia, the Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean, covering more than 4.1 million people with anticipatory action and last mile early warning information in 2023.
Jothi’s primary role in the WFP Regional Bureau is to provide technical backstopping to WFP country offices in Asia Pacific, with the design and implementation of capacity-building activities around early warning systems and climate services, to ensure vulnerable communities are better positioned to anticipate climate impacts. Jothi promotes the use of tools and approaches (that are simple and scalable) as well as institutional mechanisms that facilitate climate risk-informed decision-making at all levels. He works closely with various REAP partners to leverage their technical strength to support WFP-implemented programmes and collectively advance the early warning system, anticipatory action, and climate services agendas in the Asia Pacific region.
1. Tell us about your work on early warning systems and why it is so important.
An increasingly chaotic climate will shake the foodscape in Asia-Pacific, aggravating the suffering of vulnerable populations. Acting early is critical for effectively managing climate impacts. However, gaps remain in the application of early warning systems (EWS) regarding understanding, monitoring, and predicting risks at scale for specific locations and applications. Recognising this fundamental issue, WFP, with strong technical in-house capacity and through technical partnerships, supports government partners to strengthen various pillars of early warning systems (risk knowledge, observation and forecasting capacity, risk communication, and preparedness & response) through its ongoing programmes. This foundational approach has also significantly and positively impacted the design and delivery of anticipatory action (AA) thresholds and triggers. This extends beyond AA to the leveraging of EWS capacity to implement climate services, allowing for a more systematic approach for using climate information (observation and forecast) across time scales, ultimately minimising impacts and maximising opportunities in the agriculture sector, especially improving the livelihoods of small farmholders.
Government systems strengthening through technical and technological assistance is important for us to tackle climate-induced food security issues, so we work closely with national hydromet agencies through our in-house capacity or technical partners to strengthen their capacity to ensure reliable EWS are in place. We have ongoing programmes, and needs-based climate finance proposals are being developed in Bangladesh, Cambodia, Indonesia, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Lao PDR, Nepal, and Sri Lanka, for the implementation of either EWS and/or climate services programmes. By using this bottom-up approach, WFP is best positioned to work with partners to ensure that the EWS programmes are designed and implemented in a way that benefits vulnerable populations.
2. How does your collaboration with partners help advance your work?
Our strength lies in partnerships which span global, regional and country levels. WFP collaborates with several REAP partners in the region to advance the early warning agenda, for example with the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) for the implementation of Climate Risk and Early Warning Systems (CREWS) Initiative interventions in Cambodia and Lao PDR. We also leverage technical partnerships with the Asian Disaster Preparedness Center (ADPC) and the Regional Integrated Multi-Hazard Early Warning System to support several EWS and climate services initiatives in the region – such as the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) partnership and their Regional Climate Center mechanisms. We leverage support from the Russian Hydrometcentre to support the hydromet capacity strengthening activities of a Green Climate Fund-supported project in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, and through the Southeast Asia Network (ASEAN Specialized Meteorological Center, Bureau of Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics, and PAGASA) to support ASEAN meteorological services. Through our network of partnerships, WFP is able to draw on partners to support the strengthening of government capacity to ensure appropriate systems are in place and benefit the vulnerable communities suffering from recurring climate shocks.
3. What do you see as the next priorities to tackle so that we can take anticipatory action and climate services to scale?
We see two major challenges that can be made into opportunities to improve our anticipatory action and climate services programs in Asia-Pacific. Specifically: 1) characterising thresholds of weather/climate and extreme events and assessing their potential impacts on vulnerable populations to trigger anticipatory measures; and 2) institutionalising the programmes within government agencies (aligning with policy frameworks and institutional mandates) and promoting stronger participation of communities. Reliable historical thresholds and forecasts are key to realising the benefits and impact of anticipatory action and climate services programmes when the action is triggered and implemented. Admittedly, more work needs to be done on the EWS front, especially on impact databases and the reliability of forecast products at a scale. With the Early Warnings for All (EW4All) launch and the support for EW4All among the donor community, including GCF and CREWS, WFP collaborates with partners to advance the EW4All agenda in all the countries where we work. We are already either leading or co-leading the initiative at the country level in Bangladesh, Cambodia, Lao PDR, Nepal, and Tajikistan. For other countries, we will support the implementation through our ongoing and upcoming climate programs (Kyrgyzstan, Indonesia, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka).