17 The EU approach to resilience
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11554/13
SWD(13) 227
| Commission Staff Working Document: Action Plan for Resilience in Crisis Prone Countries 2013-2020
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| Legal base | —
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| Department | International Development
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| Basis of consideration | EM of 27 August 2013
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| Previous Committee Report | None; but see (34303) 14616/12: HC 83-xiii (2013-14), chapter 38 (4 September 2013) and HC 86-xx (2012-13), chapter 30 (21 November 2012)
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| Discussion in Council | To be determined
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| Committee's assessment | Politically important
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| Committee's decision | Cleared; further information requested
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Background
17.1 The EU is one of the world's largest donors, providing
life-saving assistance to people affected by various crises. Commission
Communication 14616/12, which we cleared last November, outlines
how the Commission proposes to help countries and communities
to be better prepared to cope with and recover from natural disasters.
The focus is on the experience gained in tackling food security
resulting from drought in the Horn of Africa and the Sahel. The
wider aim is to use this and other experience to make resilience
an integral component of EU humanitarian and development assistance,
addressing a broader set of risks, such as flooding and cyclones.
17.2 The Committee cleared the Commission Communication,
but asked the Minister (Lynne Featherstone, Parliamentary Under-Secretary
of State), to write either after the Action Plan emerged and before
the Council Conclusions, with her views on the extent to which
it met her desiderata; or, if Council Conclusions were
adopted prior to the publication and consideration of the Action
Plan, to provide her thoughts on how effectively they reflected
the UK's approach in this field.[39]
17.3 The Minister's response is set out in our
most recent Report under reference. She said that in broad terms
she was "very happy" with the Conclusions. She described
the process for negotiations as transparent and well-led by the
Irish Presidency, who drew on UK expertise from headquarters and
the field, which did "much to increase buy-in from Member
States who were previously less signed-up to the resilience agenda,
and had the corollary effect of providing the UK with an additional
avenue through which to share some of our latest lessons learned
and policy products". Her concerns with the Communication's
narrow scope in both sectoral and geographic terms were reflected
in the Conclusions, which now called for "a more complete
approach".
17.4 Finally, the Minister noted that:
— the
UK had a resilience adviser Seconded National Expert working in
DG-ECHO which she said had "greatly assisted our influencing
of the Council conclusions and the Action Plan"; and
— publication of the Action Plan was moved
to fall after adoption of the Council Conclusions "in order
to allow for it to take on board the messages contained within
them."
17.5 As well as thanking the Minister for this
further information, the Committee again drew this to the attention
of the International Development Committee, as well as it to the
attention of the many other Members interested in development
issues.[40]
The Commission Staff Working Document
17.6 The Commission Staff Working Document sets
out an Action Plan on how the European Union will support vulnerable
people and countries better in withstanding, coping with and quickly
recovering from natural disasters and conflict. It has been developed
by the European Commission (the EC's Humanitarian Office —
ECHO — and Development Co-operation — Devco) and the
European External Action Service (EEAS). If successful, the Plan
will reduce humanitarian need and the safeguard development gains:
these are seen as being of growing importance because of the rising
costs of disasters as a result of more severe weather and the
growing risks associated with population growth, urbanisation,
resource competition, fragility and conflict.
17.7 The main features of the Action Plan are
helpfully summarised by the Minister as follows:
"The cornerstone of the Plan is much better
integration between the EU's humanitarian, development and political
engagement to help countries tackle more comprehensively those
factors that lead to repeated crises — whether it's drought,
conflict, epidemics, flooding or, as is often the case, a combination
of these. In order to prevent the loss of life and livelihoods,
programmes will in future focus much more on building people's
long-term resilience to predictable shocks and stresses. Building
resilience — particularly in advance of shocks — is
more cost effective than a large scale humanitarian response in
the midst of a crisis.
"In practice, delivering this requires: strengthening
the capacity of recipient governments to integrate resilience
into their development plans; linking better humanitarian, development
and political engagement through joint analysis and planning;
improving early warning of shocks and earlier response; and integrating
resilience into food security, climate change adaptation and disaster
risk reduction investments."
17.8 The Minister notes that the Action Plan
has three implementation priorities (the Minister's emphasis):
"The first is EU support to the development
and implementation of national and regional approaches. This
is split into a number of different elements. In the case of regional
efforts, it includes building on their existing leadership role
in promoting and investing in resilience in the Sahel through
the Global Alliance for Resilience Initiative (AGIR).
"The other regional initiative is in the Horn
of Africa, principally through the implementation of the EU Supporting
the Horn of Africa's Resilience (SHARE) initiative.[41]
This, like the engagement in the Sahel, will include substantial
support from the 11th EDF. It will also be closely aligned with
the regional and country strategies developed by the US-led coordination
mechanism, the Global Alliance for Drought Resilience.
"There is also a new country 'flagship' initiative,
which will pilot EU's engagement in up to four countries. This
country and regional work be backed by efforts to better integrate
resilience into investments more broadly, such as climate change
adaptation, agriculture and nutrition.
"The second priority is innovation, learning
and advocacy. This includes, scaling up social protection
systems to help protect lives and livelihoods when disaster strikes;
stimulating the uptake of risk financing and the private sector's
support to building resilience, such as insurance; piloting initiatives
that address increasing exposure and vulnerability to risk in
urban environments; and promoting greater self-reliance amongst
refugee populations, who have been displaced for some time. A
final component is the use of EU Aid Volunteers to support building
resilience.
"The third priority is methodologies and
tools to support resilience. This focuses on developing guidance,
such as for joint risk assessment so that the humanitarian, development
and political offices in the EU can have a single, comprehensive
assessment of risk to support joint planning."
The Government's view
17.9 The Minister goes on to note that, since
2000, disasters have killed 1.1 million people, affected 2.7 billion,
caused economic loss of over US$1.3 trillion, increased poverty,
slowed the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals and
inflamed instability. With disasters expected to become more frequent
and severe, the Minister says that helping countries manage risks
should no longer be seen as a humanitarian endeavour, but first
and foremost a development one.
17.10 She continues as follows:
"This is starting to happen. There are now strong
commitments to integrate disaster resilience in humanitarian assistance
and development investments. The US launched its Resilience Strategy
last November, the EU issued its Resilience Communication in October
2012, the World Bank issued its report 'Managing Disaster Risk
for a Resilient Future' in Sendai the same month and the UK has
committed to embed disaster resilience in all its country programmes
by 2015.
"The challenge now is to implement these policies
on the ground. This Action Plan is an important step forward in
achieving this for the EU.
"The first part of the Action Plan, concerned
with delivery on the ground in countries and regions, is the most
important. The other two priority areas provide the means to achieve
this delivery. Issues of joint analysis, closer links between
humanitarian and development investments, more flexible finance
and promotion of instruments like insurance closely marry with
those used by DFID in delivering its own commitments.
"In the case of the EU's regional engagement,
the UK is supportive of EU leadership in the Sahel through AGIR
to tackle the recurrent humanitarian crises as a result of drought.
A regional roadmap has been generated. The core requirement now
is for national-level action plans to be finalised and implemented.
"The UK is also positive towards the EU's SHARE
initiative in the Horn of Africa. This is the first time that
the EU has joined its humanitarian, development and political
engagement to tackle vulnerability from drought and conflict.
The experience gained in the Horn has informed its work in the
Sahel and the EU's approach to resilience.
"However, the UK feels it is important that
the EU does not limit its focus to drought, but helps build resilience
to the broader set of risks faced in developing countries. These
include earthquakes, flooding, cyclones, epidemics and other shocks.
"The proposed flagship programmes offer an appropriate
way to tackle these risks. Although the selections of the flagships
have not been finalised, it is expected that they will closely
dovetail with some of the UK priority countries, such as Haiti
and Nepal, and also offers the opportunity for joint working with
the UK.
"The above components closely tie with the work
of the Political Champions for Disaster Resilience. This is an
informal group co-chaired by the Secretary of State for International
Development and the UNDP Administrator aimed at promoting greater
focus and investment in building resilience. The EC [European
Commission] is a member, along with other donors, UN agencies,
developing countries, the World Bank and the private sector.
"The Political Champions' prime focus is building
resilience in specific countries and regions. Its initial focus
has been on Haiti, where there has been an effort to rally donor
action around an agreed programme of action with the Government.
Making Haiti a flagship for the EU will help reinforce this work.
"Another focus of the Political Champions is
stimulating insurance penetration in lower income countries. The
level of insurance penetration is lowest where vulnerability is
increasing. In developing countries just 5.0% of direct losses
are insured compared to 40% in developed countries.
"There are a range of factors preventing the
penetration of insurance. They include lack of risk data, regulatory
failures, insufficient scale of transactions, high start-up costs
and lack of confidence in insurance products. Given the challenges
in getting insurance market penetration in lower income countries,
the Political Champions agreed that a fresh and energised conversation
is needed between the public sector and the insurance sector to
assess the opportunities and to agree on a joint package of investment
to stimulate the market.
"The EC is engaged in this and it is helping
inform their engagement in developing countries following their
Green Paper on insurance and disaster prevention. It will be important
to bring together these efforts, so that they generate a real
opportunity to scale up insurance penetration and avoid the current
practice of trialling small scale, ad hoc, pilot initiatives.
"The UK is also supportive of the emphasis placed
in the Action Plan on innovation and learning. Building resilience
is a new approach to tackling risk, so there is a need to have
a strong focus on testing and building the evidence base of what
works and delivers results and value for money.
"It is very important that these lessons are
shared. One of the areas where particular attention needs to be
given is how best to build resilience in fragile and conflict
affected states. This is an issue that many donors are starting
to grapple with.
"One issue that will be need to be closely followed
as the implementation of the Plan is rolled out is how the EU
institutionally adjusts to make sure this becomes an integral
way of how it does it does business. Of particular note, will
be how well the different parts of the EU system work together,
how they generate and pool the political engagement and technical
capacity to support delivery, and increase the flexibility of
engagement, including finance, in order to adjust to changing
risks on the ground.
"The Action Plan proposes that EU Aid Volunteers
should be used to help build resilience. The establishment of
this corps has not yet been approved. DFID will be providing advice
on this to the Scrutiny Committee in the autumn.[42]"
17.11 The Minister continues her comments thus:
"The Government welcomes the EU's focus on building
resilience in high risk, crisis prone countries. The Department
for International Development (DFID) has worked closely with the
responsible departments in the development of the Action Plan.
EM 14616-12 "The EU Approach to Resilience: Learning from
Food Crises", the Council Conclusions and the Action Plan
reflect the UK Government's own policy and strategy on disaster
resilience. Lord Ashdown's Humanitarian Emergency Response Review
in March 2011 highlighted the importance of building the capacity
of national government and civil society to cope with and respond
to natural and man-made disasters. Embedding disaster resilience
in all countries where we work and showing international leadership
in the agenda are core UK policy commitments.
"The process in developing the Action Plan was
transparent and the Member States were consulted at each stage
of the Communication, Council Conclusions and Action Plan. The
EU and Irish Presidency drew on UK expertise and technical inputs
from headquarters and the country offices. The UK attended the
Consultation Meeting on 25 April 2013 and reiterated the need
to focus on fragile and conflict affected states, where the need
is greatest, and to undertake joint planning at Brussels and country
levels in implementing the Action Plan.
"Overall, the UK is content with the proposed
Action Plan."
Conclusion
17.12 The need for this sort of approach
is evident, and the way in which the process has been taken forward
by the Commission is exemplary — notably the involvement
of the Department for International Development (DFID). However,
as the Minister indicates, how the Action Plan is implemented
is what will matter most — especially the sharing of lessons
and making sure, as the Minister puts it:
"this becomes an integral way of how it does
business how well the different parts of the EU system work together,
how they generate and pool the political engagement and technical
capacity to support delivery, and increase the flexibility of
engagement, including finance, in order to adjust to changing
risks on the ground."
17.13 Curiously, the Minister makes no mention
of Monitoring and Evaluation: whereas the Commission Staff Working
Document says that:
— each
priority action included in the Action Plan is linked to an overall
objective and a specific output, so as regularly to monitor effective
implementation of the Action Plan;
— a performance management framework,
as well as related monitoring and evaluation frameworks, will
be developed, allowing progress on the implementation of the Plan
to be tracked;
— the Commission and the EEAS will engage
with the Member States to review progress made on the resilience
agenda at regular intervals, looking in particular at the policy,
programming, mobilisation and use of funding, implementation modalities
and results; and
— regular reviews of the Action Plan
will be organised to assess progress and adapt the Action Plan
where necessary, building on the lessons learnt throughout the
implementation of the Action Plan, thus allowing for further elaboration
of resilience building actions in the years to come.
17.14 This is as it should be. Though no
specific timeline is given, we would be grateful if the Minister
would write to the Committee in a year's time with whatever information
is then available about the reviewing of implementation and an
indication of what the future review timeline is (an annual report,
for example; or a review by the European Court of Auditors).
17.15 In the meantime, we clear this Commission
Staff Working Document.
17.16 We also draw this chapter of our Report
to the attention of the International Development Committee.
39 See headnote: HC 86-xx (2012-13), chapter 30 (21
November 2012). Back
40
See headnote: HC 83-xiii (2013-14), chapter 38 (4 September
2013). Back
41
In 2012 the European Commission developed what is describes as
"a new approach for the Horn of Africa - Supporting Horn
of Africa Resilience (SHARE) - that aims to break the vicious
cycle of crises in the region. In the framework of SHARE, the
European Commission is investing more than €270 million in
supporting recovery from the last drought in the Horn of Africa
through close cooperation between humanitarian aid and long-term
development. It is also working to strengthen the countries'
and population's resilience to future crises". See http://ec.europa.eu/echo/files/aid/countries/factsheets/hoa_en.pdf
for full information. For the Committee's consideration of the
SHARE initiative, see (34090) 8774/12: HC 86-xxxi (2012-13),
chapter 11 (6 February 2013). Back
42
For the Committee's consideration of the Commission's proposals
on the European Voluntary Humanitarian Aid Corps, see HC 83-iv
(2013-14), chapter 6 (5 June 2013) and the Reports referred to
therein. Back
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