Online Event // Launching event of the Drought Finance Tracker
Organised by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, this launching event aims to introduce the Drought Finance Tracker and raise awareness of drought finance.
This article was initially published on the FAO website.
Background
Worldwide, the increasing frequency and severity of drought events is threatening societies, ecosystems and economies, while entailing significant costs to compensate losses and damages. FAO and the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) together with other partners have been promoting the concept of integrated drought management to shift away from reactive to proactive approaches. Financing proactive approaches is particularly effective and valuable in the case of a slow-onset hazard such as drought. Nevertheless, deployed resources have fallen far short of the required levels, be it proactive or post-disaster financing.
Understanding of drought finance flows has been limited due to the lack of a consistent and comprehensive monitoring system. However, the establishment of such system is a prerequisite for intensifying finance flows and making investment more effective. Such system can provide a strong enabling environment for drought-resilience building.
To address this gap, FAO has developed a new global tool for monitoring and assessing drought finance flows, called "Drought Finance Tracker". The Drought Finance Tracker builds on the official development assistance registered by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) to create a drought-specific database. The Drought Finance Tracker is an open-access and user-friendly platform that provides an overview of the global finance trends, numerical statistics, and advanced visual analyses. It enables sector-based and country-specific analysis of the international finance flows targeted towards drought management.
The event
The launcing event aims to introduce the Drought Finance Tracker, as well as, to raise awareness on drought finance. The event has the following objectives:
- discussing the key challenges in drought finance to contextualize the Drought Finance Tracker tool;
- reviewing the trends and patterns in drought finance to demonstrate the application fields of the tool; and
- demonstrating the Drought Finance Tracker to support the access and use.
The event is organized by the Land and Water Division of FAO in partnership with the Global Mechanism of UNCCD. The event provides opportunity for discussion with experts and developers through an interactive session.
Agenda
- 15.00 - 15.10 : Opening remarks - Ms Sasha Koo-Oshima , Deputy Director Land and Water Division, Land and Water Division, FAO, Rome / Ms Louise Baker, Managing Director of Global Mechanism, UNCCD
- 15.10 - 15.25 : Key challenges in drought finance: paving the way for enabling pathways - Mr Maher Salman, Senior Land and Water Officer, AWM Team Lead Land and Water Division, FAO, Rome
- 15.25 - 15.35 : Analysis of the drought finance flows: observations and patterns characterizing drought finance - Ms Eva Pek, Land and Water Officer, Land and Water Division, FAO, Rome
- 15.35 - 15.45 : Drought Finance Tracker : a walkthrough - Video demonstration
- 15.45 - 16.00 : Interactive session – discussion with experts and developers
- 16.00: Closing remarks
The event can be accessed via the following link: https://fao.zoom.us/j/95577115634
Passcode: 123456789
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