The ASEAN region including Cambodia is increasingly vulnerable to shocks from natural hazards such as floods, drought and cyclones, as well as pest and disease that are becoming more frequent and intense, threatening life, social and economic development and human rights.

The scale of the 2020 floods compounded with the COVID-19 pandemic required an unprecedented level of efforts. Learning from this, Cambodia’s government is looking for new way to manage disasters to reduce their impacts, protect lives and livelihoods, while ensuring effective humanitarian interventions.

In line with this commitment, the Ministry of Social Affairs, Veterans and Youth (MoSAVY) and National Committee for Disaster Management (NCDM) co-organized a two-day workshop from 7 to 8 September 2021 to discuss preparedness for potential floods in 2021 and future shocks through new approaches, namely Anticipatory Action and Shock-Responsive Social Protection.

Building on lessons from the 2020 floods, the workshop discussed the available early warning system, how this can trigger early actions, before the disaster strikes, and timely response to safeguard lives and livelihoods, how these actions can be delivered via existing social protection programme and capacities for coordinated actions by the disaster risk management and social protections systems.

The workshop was presided over by H.E. Senior Minister Kun Kim, First Vice-President of the NCDM, and H.E Vong Sauth, MoSVY’s Minister, with technical assistance from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the World Food Programme (WFP) and the UNICEF. The workshop gathered more than 300 participants from all key relevant ministries, including Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF), Water Resources and Meteorology (MoWRAM), Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF), Planning (MoP), Education, Youth and Sport (MoEYS), Rural Development (MRD), Interior (MoI), Health (MoH), Land Management, Urban Planning and Construction (MLMUPC) etc., Provincial Committee for Disaster Management  (PCDM) of all 25 provinces/capital, the Cambodian Red Cross, as well as United Nations Agencies, development partners and NGOs working in social protection/assistance, disaster risk reduction/disaster risk management.

“Natural disaster can wipe out decades of investment in human development. It affects household incomes, livelihoods, food security and access to basic services. As a result, people would take negative coping measures such as reducing food consumption, withdrawing children from school, or selling productive assets, and this will ultimately increase their vulnerability,” as emphasized by H.E. Samheng Boros, Secretary of State of the MoSAVY. He further stressed the importance of preparedness, anticipatory action and timely and effective response to protect the livelihoods.

In Cambodia, the 2020 floods alone killed 58 people and directly affected close to 223 000 families. Lessons learned point to the need to better prepare for floods in 2021. Combined with COVID-19 pandemic, the floods put millions people at risk of falling back to poverty. Through expanded poverty registry (the ID-Poor), the Government has provided cash assistance. Using this experience, this important workshop discussed opportunities to transform disaster preparedness in the country, taking forward the anticipatory action approach and implement the recently developed national shock responsive social protection framework.

Anticipatory action is an innovative way to manage disasters, using early warnings and pre-committed finance to design and implement actions to protect family and their assets ahead of hazard or crises. Shock Responsive Social Protection framework, on the other hand, refers to the use of social protection systems to mitigate the impact of shocks affecting many communities, regions or nationwide and support affected households.

In recent years, anticipatory action has drawn the attention of the wider humanitarian and development community, and has been proved to be cost-effective, to save lives and livelihoods. Empirical evidence suggests that for every USD 1 invested, USD 3 - 7 can be gained in benefits as the benefits of these interventions can ultimately ease the need for massive relief and rebuilding operations in the wake of a disaster. 

Reflecting on the experiences in 2020 , Ms Pauline Tamesis, the UN Resident Coordinator in Cambodia commented that, “Responding to a crisis also provides an opportunity for transformation – an opportunity to more strongly bridge the humanitarian-development nexus. … This can be done by leveraging existing social protection and social assistance schemes for an early response to mitigate the impact of large-scale shocks affecting whole communities and support affected households.”

She added that pre-committed financing by leveraging the existing budgetary reserve, and adequate and reliable data (early warning systems, forecasts and monitoring systems) are key to drive early actions.

H.E. Vong Sauth, Minister of MoSAVY, emphasised the firm expectation from this very significant workshop that, “it is mainly to assemble all valuable past experiences, which are consistent with practical implementation to offer interventions with clear and certain roles and responsibilities of all key stakeholders. This is a solid foundation for development of strategic response and contingency plan for disaster response under the framework of social assistance, establishment of a good and timely response mechanism that help reduce risks with high saving cost, while contributing to prevention and mitigation of disaster impacts and increasing preparedness for response, rehabilitation and resilience.”

In his opening remark, H.E. Senior Minister Kun Kim, emphasized the need to strengthen preparedness capacities of the most at risk communities in parallel with efforts in developing contingency plan.

“We should build their preparedness capacities, enabling them to act early, to timely respond, and immediately recover from disaster. For this reason, I urged all partners to prepare investment programme to bridge social protection and disaster risk management and resilience building of the local communities.”  

The event took place following a warning from the specialized forecast agencies that La Niña may return in September and will cause wetter-than-normal conditions in much of Southeast Asia countries. The seasonal forecast by the MoWRAM announced that this year that the Mekong Basin, floodplain, and areas adjacent to the Mekong River could experience medium floods. This is of a particular concern, requiring strong attention and efforts to better prepare, in order to mitigate impacts to the livelihoods of the people.