Context
Global warming is threatening the livelihoods of smallholders and livestock farmers in many regions of the world. In addition to gradual changes in temperature and precipitation, the occurrence of extreme weather events plays a decisive role in many places. In this context, there is an urgent need for instruments that assist households to adapt to climate change and reduce their vulnerability to future extreme events. Anticipatory humanitarian assistance is a promising approach that assists households at risk from extreme weather conditions. Assistance is provided on the basis of predictions and forecasts, preemptively addressing disasters before they occur or reach their full extent. While the approach is being discussed with great expectations among policy stakeholders and practitioners, there is a lack of methodologically robust findings on its effectiveness.
Project Aims and Research Questions
The aim of the CashEval project is to generate new insights into the effectiveness of anticipatory humanitarian assistance. Specifically, it investigates to what extent unconditional, anticipatory cash transfers can increase the resilience of households to extreme weather events. In addition, a decision tool will be developed that allows stakeholders to systematically decide on target groups and amounts of cash transfers in the future. As a key component of the project, a randomized field experiment was conducted during the 2020/21 winter in Mongolia, consisting of the distribution of unconditional anticipatory cash transfers to at-risk pastoralists. The humanitarian intervention was implemented by the NGO People in Need (PIN). The research design was developed by PIK researchers. The data for this research project is sourced from the Coping with Shocks in Mongolia Household Panel Survey, implemented by PIK researchers in cooperation with the National Statistics Office of Mongolia (NSO) as part of the ADAPT project. The availability of detailed household-level data before and after the humanitarian intervention allows for causal inferences on the effectiveness of anticipatory humanitarian assistance. While the project evaluates a humanitarian intervention in Mongolia, it aims to achieve transferability of the results to other countries and extreme weather events as far as possible.
Team
| Prof. Dr. Kati Kraehnert | Dr. Lukas Mogge | Dr. Julian Roeckert |
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Results
Mogge, L., J. Roeckert, and K. Kraehnert. 2024. "Impacts of anticipatory cash transfers in the context of weather disasters." Ruhr Economic Papers #1065.
Anticipatory humanitarian assistance is a novel approach to aid in the context of weather disasters, drawing on meteorological forecasts. Using a randomized study design, we analyze the impact of anticipatory cash transfers distributed to pastoralist households in Mongolia during an extreme winter event. We do not find overall effects on livestock assets, income, investments, or consumption across the study population. No heterogenous effects are found for different levels of disaster intensity. However, there is robust evidence that cash transfers benefited households with lower pre-treatment wealth. The paper concludes by highlighting practical challenges in evaluating (anticipatory) humanitarian interventions.
