Abstract
A good early warning system is one that provides timely planning information to a diverse set of stakeholders. While policy makers need very concise messages for quick decisions, aid and development agencies need very specific and detailed information which can help them in programming at grass-roots level. This paper reviews Zambia’s crop monitoring and early warning systems and suggests practical ways to improve its efficiency and effectiveness, taking advantage of existing and potential synergistic and institutional opportunities.
Highlights
Impacts of disasters on society often are huge and tend to be exacerbated by society’s inability to fully adapt their livelihoods and frameworks of development to the environment around them
Several documents were reviewed in the process, including dekadal crop weather bulletins from the Zambia Meteorological Department (ZMD), previous Crop Monitoring Survey Project (CMSP) monthly reports, policy briefs by other organizations such as USAID’s FEWS NET, the Food Security Research Project (FSRP), and several other publications on early warning systems in Zambia
In Zambia, it is important that any crop monitoring system builds upon and benefits from existing and potential synergies with the Meteorological Department’s (MD’s) AgroMetShell (AMS) and the national vulnerability assessment and analysis (NVAC)
Summary
Impacts of disasters on society often are huge and tend to be exacerbated by society’s inability to fully adapt their livelihoods and frameworks of development to the environment around them. It is argued that the combined effect of inadequate information, inadequate response mechanisms, and policy weaknesses account for frequent food shortages in much of sub-Saharan Africa. This is so even though the precursors are largely the same - adverse weather. It is recognized that such arrangements are of limited value unless they are part of and facilitate strengthening of existing institutions. These and other such initiatives present a unique opportunity to draw lessons for building national and regional capacities to develop effective early warning systems.
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