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The Crisis Lookout Coalition is working towards a radical shift in how the world responds to risk and reacts to disasters.

We will bring together expert organisations and individuals to promote a plan to protect the lives and livelihoods of vulnerable communities around the world. The coalition is calling for a new global agreement for crisis protection to identify priority risks, help people adapt and make sure they have the funds they need when it matters most.

By making the following critical choices, G7 countries could quickly transform how disasters are financed:

• Predict crises better: By creating a new ‘Crisis Lookout’ function to increase engagement with risk information and support the prioritisation of crises globally, regionally, and nationally.
  • The world has the scientific knowledge and technology to track and model many types of risks. But at this moment, a global system for predicting crises and acting on that information to protect people does not exist.
  • G7 countries should help create a new entity or partnership – a global Crisis Lookout – to provide comprehensive risk assessments and calculate the funds needed to respond to a potential disaster.
  • Before COVID-19, outbreak specialists said we should be worried about pandemics. But there was no organisation or entity tasked with helping us all understand how concerned we should be relative to other risks.
  • The Crisis Lookout would bring together global experts in natural sciences, finance, economics, risk modelling, poverty analysis, conflict and epidemiology. This team would work across governments and international institutions, to synthesise existing information and model risks, analyse how they interact, and communicate to people about the risks they face and how we can work together to protect them. In a world of increasing disasters, this approach will be central to stability and prosperity.
• Prepare response better: By agreeing to make pre-arranged finance the primary way to pay for crises, so that funding gets where it is needed faster, with greater impact.
  • Right now, our crisis response funding is too slow, unpredictable and not linked to proven, pre-agreed plans. Most importantly, this costs people’s lives. But it also costs money. The longer you leave a crisis, the bigger it grows and more funds are needed to help people recover. Pre-arranged finance is a smarter way to spend as it allows money to reach those on the frontline faster, protecting more people with the same amount of money.
  • Pre-arranged financing plays a role in breaking the downward spiral people experience from disasters. Assured that emergency relief funding will be there if it's needed, governments can invest more in protecting vulnerable communities in advance of a crisis, and focus on longer-term projects like building hospitals and schools.
  • The Crisis Lookout Coalition believes G7 countries should make pre-arranged finance the primary method for funding disasters by 2030, with credible plans in place by COP 26 and annual monitoring of progress.
• Protect vulnerable people better: By supporting an initial group of ‘pathfinder’ countries to ensure that we ‘leave no one behind’ through better prediction of, and coordinated protection from, crises.
  • Our first two goals – building a crisis lookout entity and shifting to pre-arranged financing – will take time. Meanwhile disasters are increasing in frequency and severity so quickly that we cannot wait five years to offer support and protect people.
  • Working with experts and governments in crisis-prone regions, the G7 should support a small number of ‘Pathfinder’ countries willing to participate in a pilot initiative. This would include about ten highly-vulnerable countries with a wide range of risk contexts, especially those that are struggling to understand and proactively manage disasters.

Given the rising risks of climate change, a coordinated system to address crises around the world is long overdue. The good news is that, by harnessing progress in technology, improving collaboration from global to local and agreeing to finance disasters before they happen, we can predict disasters, prepare our response and protect lives.