Anticipatory action in communities hosting refugees and internally displaced persons: a synthesis report with case studies from Ethiopia, Jordan and Pakistan

UNHCR (2024a) reports that by June 2024 there were an estimated 122.6 million people around the world who have been forced to flee their homes. Among them were nearly 43.7 million refugees. This poses immense challenges for the humanitarian sector. These challenges are particularly acute in fragile states, such as Libya, Somalia, South Sudan and Syria, where civil war has pushed respective populations into extreme levels of vulnerability. Likewise, in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and Ukraine, ongoing wars have created impossible conditions for the humanitarian sector. Forced displacement from war, conflict and disasters is putting additional pressure on natural resources, such as food, land, and water systems (FLWSs) in host communities, in some cases leading to tensions between internally displaced persons (IDPs), refugees, and their hosts. In all these cases of forced displacement, the compounding effects of climate change are being felt, in some cases contributing as a dynamic pressure to ongoing conflicts, such as Somalia and Syria, or as in the case of Ethiopia, Jordan and Pakistan, leading to extreme weather events including flash flooding, droughts and heatwaves. Climate impacts are exacerbated by human processes such as deforestation, loss of wetlands and urbanization, which have reduced the buffer capacity of landscapes to absorb climate-related impacts such as the slightest variations in rainfall patterns and even relatively low increases in temperatures. In response to these challenges, the CGIAR Initiative on Fragility, Conflict, and Migration (FCM) was launched. The initiative aimed to address challenges to livelihood, food, and climate security faced by some of the most vulnerable populations worldwide. The Initiative focuses on building climate resilience, promoting gender equity, and fostering social inclusion. The FCM Initiative has a four‐pronged approach: (1) strengthen anticipatory action and governance to mitigate the impact of compound crises (WP1– ANTICIPATE); (2) bridge emergency operations with long‐ term sustainability principles (WP2–BRIDGE); (3) generate evidence to guide effective policies and programming to promote stability and women’s empowerment (WP3–STABILIZE); and (4) accelerate innovations that address humanitarian‐peace‐ development (HDP) priorities alongside local innovators, including women (WP4–ACCELERATE) As part of the CGIAR’s FCM initiative, the ANTICIPATE work package has carried out research In Ethiopia, Jordan and Pakistan, with a focus on the respective host communities to identify common risks to FLWSs, ascertain prevailing responses to increased stress on FLWSs, and to produce policy recommendations to support the development of anticipatory action strategies. This also includes the development of an integrated host community vulnerability framework (IHCVF) that supports the planning and design of anticipatory action approaches, disaster risk reduction (DRR) and longer-term resilience-building initiatives, such as adaptation strategies and nature-based solutions. This research report provides a synthesis of the work that was conducted under the ANTICIPATE work package, drawing from the three case studies in Ethiopia, Jordan and Pakistan.