Early warning of famine: a red herring?
1987
Cutler, P.
While the global famine early-warning system was criticized for its reliance on highly aggregated information on production and consumption that was compiled from official sources, it nevertheless delivered timely warnings of exceptional crop failures and declining national feed availability over 1983-1984 in as many as 24 African countries. The response from donors over the same period, however, was almost, without exception, late, inadequate and above all politically conditioned. Consequently, improving the warning system in the current administrative context might be considered as a "red herring" for the following reasons: 1) there were no serious discussions among donor agencies as to what indicators will be taken as a basis for concrete action, and what kind of extraordinary response will be possible at an early stage in the famine process; 2) there was no apparent attempt to direct contingency resources to representatives of donor agencies working in famine-prone countries or to give them administrative leeway to enable them to begin preemptive relief operations; and 3) currently funded projects were budgeted for 2-3 years or have uncertain budgets.
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