Livelihoods, Early Assessment and Protection project (LEAP)
WFP and the World Bank are working with the Government of Ethiopia to develop an integrated national risk mangement framework through the Livelihoods, Early Assessment and Protection project (LEAP) project. LEAP is an innovative early warning – early action tool that supports the national Productive Safety Nets Program and prompts its timely and effective scale up when a serious drought or flood is detected. LEAP provides national authorities with an advanced food security early warning system that activates contingency plans and triggers contingent finance. As part of this mechanism, resources from a $ US 160 million contingency fund can be made immediately available to ensure early action and effective response, protecting livelihoods, and saving lives.
The LEAP food security early warning tool converts agro-meteorological data into crop or rangeland production estimates and allow quantifying the financial resources needed to scale up the National Productive Safety Net Programme in case of a major drought. This can trigger - in a transparent, objective and verifiable way - the immediate release of contingent funds to activate the government response ahead of time, before the crisis has an impact on people’s lives and livelihoods.
The meteorological information comes from satellite data and a network of automated weather stations. To improve the quality and availability of this data, the project has increased the national meteorological capacities through training and infrastructure establishment. So far, 20 automated weather stations have been installed in food insecure pastoral and agro-pastoral areas of Ethiopia and 15 more stations will be established in 2011.