Business Case and Intervention Summary
Intervention Summary
Title: Accelerating progress on disaster resilience in DFID country programmes
What support will the UK provide?
The UK will provide £ 4 million over three years: 2012/13 – 2014/15.
Why is UK support required?
The Humanitarian Emergency Response Review (HERR) noted that “the more resilient a nation, the
less lasting damage disasters cause and the quicker they can recover.1” It concluded that where
governments of at-risk countries are capable of building resilience, the UK should help them by:
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Making disaster resilience a core part of development and humanitarian programming;
Undertaking contingency planning;
Supporting stronger national disaster response capabilities in DFID’s priority countries.
The Independent Commission for Aid Impact (ICAI) report, DFID’s Humanitarian Emergency Response
in the Horn of Africa, also found that focusing on disaster resilience would improve effectiveness of
development and humanitarian programmes.2 This approach offers better value for money: in parts of
Ethiopia and Kenya, $ 1 spent on disaster resilience provides returns of $ 2.8 - $ 2.9 in benefits.3
This project – called the “Catalytic Fund” - will fund discrete projects to embed and accelerate disaster
resilience programming in DFID’s priority countries, to support innovation and encourage other
partners to scale-up their work in this area.
What are the expected results?
Porjects under the Catalytic Fund will support two outcomes:
 Work to embed disaster resilience in all DFID country programmes by 2015;
 Innovation and evidence to encourage other partners to scale-up disaster resilience
programmes.
These meet the commitment set out in the UK Government’s Response to the HERR and respond to
the recommendations of the ICAI report, DFID’s Humanitarian Response in the Horn of Africa.
The Catalytic Fund will produce these outcomes by funding projects aimed one of three different
results:
 Embed disaster resilience to a minimum standard in DFID country programmes;
 Generate evidence and support innovation in disaster resilience programming;
 Accelerate work under the Political Champions for Disaster Resilience.
1
Humanitarian Emergency Response Review (2010), Executive Summary
ICAI (2012), DFID’s Humanitarian Emergency Reponse in the Horn of Africa, pg. 22
3 Cabot Venton, Fitzgibbon and Shitarek (2012), The Economics of Early Response and Disaster
Resilience
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Business Case
Strategic Case
A. Context and need for a DFID intervention
In 2010, global spending on humanitarian aid reached a record US$ 16.7 billion, but disasters and
rising delivery costs meant almost 40% of needs went unmet. And in 2011, disasters inflicted
damages worth at least US$ 366 billion. These impacts are expected to rise: Oxfam predicts that
climatic disasters alone will affect 375 million people per year by 2015, an increase from 263 million
in 2010.4 The costs of humanitarian response threaten to continue to rise as disasters increase in
scale and frequency. Donors and affected countries are increasingly looking to build vulnerable
communities’ resilience to disasters in order to deal with these changing conditions.
The DFID Approach Paper Defining Disaster Resilience provided the following working definition of
what disaster resilience means in practice:
“Disaster Resilience is the ability of countries, communities and
households to manage change, by maintaining or transforming living
standards in the face of shocks or stresses – such as earthquakes,
drought or violent conflict – without compromising their long-term
prospects."5
The HERR highlighted that resilient communities are better able to cope with the shocks and
stresses caused by disasters. Resilient communities suffer less loss of life and economic damage
when a disaster strikes. International aid organisations, donors, affected countries and civil society
are responding through increasing their focus on building disaster resilience.6
There is a good economic and value for money case for accelerating work on disaster resilience. A
recent DFID-funded study of communities in parts of Ethiopia and Kenya found that every $1 spent
on disaster resilience resulted in benefits, in the form of reduced humanitarian spend and avoided
losses, of $2.8 in Ethiopia and $2.9 in Kenya.7
These benefits have long-term effects. The World Bank has demonstrated that, particularly in
countries dependent on agriculture, disasters slow economic growth in the long term as well as in the
short term.8 Helping communities become more resilient is an important way of protecting
development investments in infrastructure, financial systems, governance institutions and basic
services such as health and education. Furthermore, because disasters disproportionately affect
women and children, making them more vulnerable to disease, violence and human rights abuses,
building resilience helps ensure women and girls are better able to protect themselves in the event of
a disaster.
DFID has already committed to action: the department’s Structural Reform Plan states that eight of
4
HERR (2010), Foreword
Defining Disaster Resilience: A DFID Approach Paper (2011), pg. 6
6 See, for example, the Communiqué for the joint IGAD Ministerial and High Level UN Agencies
meeting on Drought Resilience in the Horn of Africa, the European Council Conclusions on
Strengthening Resilience to Food Crises in the Horn of Africa, the USAID Press Release on a
Partnership to Strengthen Resilience, the Sahel working group report on resilience to food insecurity,
or UNISDR’s call to build urban resilience to natural disasters.
7 Cabot Venton, Fitzgibbon and Shitarek (2012), The Economics of Early Response and Disaster
Resilience
8 Benson and Clay (2004), The economic impacts of disasters. World Bank
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DFID’s country programmes will be strengthening disaster resilience by the end of the current
financial year.9 The UK Government Response to the HERR commits to embedding resilience in all
of DFID’s remaining country programmes by 2015.
The UK Government Response to the HERR also commits the UK to ensuring that “others lead to
improve resilience in … priority countries.” The principal platform for delivering this commitment is the
Political Champions for Disaster Resilience Group, co-chaired by the UK Secretary of State for
International Development and the UNDP Executive Director. A DFID intervention will enable the
Political Champions to apply greater political focus and leverage investment in disaster resilience
across the world.
B. Impact and Outcome that we expect to achieve
Impact
 A global increase in programmes which are focused on disaster resilience, or include disaster
resilience objectives.
Outcomes
 Disaster resilience embedded in all DFID country programmes by 2015;
 Innovation and evidence generated by catalytic fund used in disaster resilience programming
worldwide.
Outputs
The Catalytic Fund will directly support three outputs, with a focus on the first:
i)
DFID country offices meet the criteria of the Minimum Standards for Embedding Disaster
Resilience in DFID Country Offices. For example:
o
o
o
o
Carry out a multi-hazard risk assessment;
Develop a country/regional disaster resilience strategy;
Disaster-proof new business cases;
Develop new programmes and adapt existing programmes to support disaster
resilience – e.g. by integrating resilience into DFID Mozambique’s Productive Safety
Net Programme.
ii)
Generate evidence and support innovation in disaster resilience programming – for example,
through studies of the costs and benefits of different interventions to build disaster resilience;
iii)
Accelerate work of key international partners on disuaster resilience, including under the
Political Champions for Disaster Resilience. As an example, there are currently three Political
Champions workstreams which the Catalytic Fund might support:
o
o
o
Joint UNDP and OCHA proposals to build national-level disaster resilience, through
political engagement and high-level visits, and providing technical and financial
support to national planning processes;
World Bank-led work to improve low-income and fragile states’ understanding and
financial management of disaster risk;
UK-led work to stimulate and leverage private sector engagement in building disaster
resilience.
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DFID Structural Reform Plan 2012-2015, Action 4.4.ii. The 8 country programmes are Ethiopia,
Kenya, Sudan, Mozambique, Malawi, Uganda, Bangladesh and Nepal.
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Appraisal Case
A. What are the feasible options that address the need set out in the Strategic case?
1. Do nothing
Many DFID programmes already contribute to building the resilience of vulnerable communities and
a small number of country offices already meet the Minimum Standards. Without a targeted
intervention, progress will continue, but more slowly, making it less likely that all country offices would
meet the Minimum Standards by 2015.
Country offices will continue to work towards the Minimum Standards through their existing
programmes. Taking the “do nothing” approach would inhibit country offices’ ability to extend existing
programmes, run pilots or commission research. This would not meet DFID’s need for a more
sophisticated understanding of which interventions are most effective at building disaster resilience in
different contexts.
CHASE will be able to provide some limited advisory support to country offices, but the ability of
CHASE humanitarian advisers and OT staff to support the production of key parts of the Minimum
Standards will be much reduced. This is likely to over-burden Country office staff.
2. Catalytic Fund
A flexible fund held by CHASE and released in response proposals from country offices and other
partners.
CHASE will have the necessary resources to support country offices in meeting the commitment to
embed resilience in all country programmes. Oversight from CHASE will ensure that disaster
resilience work across DFID is coherent and that our links to international partners are efficiently
managed.
Country office budgets are often thinly-stretched and / or already largely dedicated to programmes
that will run well beyond the end of the current financial year. Greater flexibility of financing is
needed. Providing rapid support through a Catalytic Fund will therefore galvanise progress towards
the commitment to embed by 2015 much more quickly than would otherwise be possible, and will
permit flexibility in responding to country offices’ programming and knowledge gaps.
Pilot projects and targeted research will encourage the innovation necessary to establish what
interventions build disaster resilience most effectively in different environments. Building the evidence
base will encourage greater international take-up of the disaster resilience agenda, including from
other donors, civil society and governments of affected countries.
Promising Political Champions workstreams can be considered for DFID resources and allocated as
appropriate.
3. Disaster Resilience Central Fund;
A CHASE-controlled central fund, deployed by CHASE advisers and large enough to support the
design and implementation of free-standing disaster resilience programmes in DFID country offices.
A central fund would signal DFID’s commitment to disaster resilience. New disaster resilience
programmes would be implemented alongside existing DFID-funded interventions.
The introduction of a central fund would require an increase in CHASE’s programme management
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and advisory capacity and significantly more financial resources if it were to have the desired impact
on the ground.
However, the creation of a fund for new disaster resilience programmes would unhelpfully separate
resilience from other DFID work.
Situating a central fund in CHASE would also neglect opportunities to build DFID country office
ownership. It is clear from the experience of mainstreaming the Climate Smart agenda through DFID
programmes that this is key to success. A lack of country office ownership would also make it more
difficult to take account of local needs, obstacles and opportunities in programme and pilot design.
And procurement would become less efficient without drawing on country office experience of local
markets and delivery partners.
B. Assessing the strength of the evidence base for each feasible option
In the table below the quality of evidence for each option is rated as either Strong, Medium or Limited
Option
1
2
3
Evidence rating
Strong
Strong
Strong
What is the likely impact (positive and negative) on climate change and environment for each
feasible option?
Categorise as A, high potential risk / opportunity; B, medium / manageable potential risk /
opportunity; C, low / no risk / opportunity; or D, core contribution to a multilateral organisation.
Option
1
2
3
Climate change and environment risks
and impacts, Category (A, B, C, D)
C
C
C
Climate change and environment
opportunities, Category (A, B, C, D)
C
B
B
Climate change and environmental degradation can endanger the lives and livelihoods of the most
vulnerable communities and groups by eroding their resilience and undermining opportunities for
sustainable development. The multi-hazard approach proposed to building disaster resilience and
improving response capability supported by this intervention is expected, in the medium-term, to
both reduce vulnerability and build resilience and adaptive capacity to climate change and
environmental degradation and shocks.
The direct climate change and risks and impacts and opportunities for all three options are negligible.
However, there is significant potential for indirect climate change and environment opportunities for
options 2 and 3. The process of embedding disaster resilience, which will be supported by the
proposed intervention will lessen the impact of climate related disasters on communities and
countries and should contribute to the development of more disaster resilient programming.
This programme will help countries build resilience to disasters and cope with the growing impact of
climate change. Disaster resilience strategies will require countries to i) understand and moniter how
climate change is accelerating the frequency and severity of disasters in their region/country and ii)
identify measures to build resilience to disasters, including measures to adapt to the impacts of
climate change. For example, switching to crops that can cope with increasing levels of droughts or
floods.
C. What are the costs and benefits of each feasible option?
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1. Do nothing: N/A
2. Catalytic Fund
Overall costs – both financial and human - are relatively low. The most significant cost is staff time –
in particular that of country office staff responsible for designing, implementing and monitoring
programmes funded by the Catalytic Fund proposals. Requirements on the time of the management
board will be kept low by use of a standard application template. Key benefits are the ability to fund
flexibly small projects with potentially significant returns, and to be responsive to the needs of DFID
country offices.
3. Disaster Resilience Central Fund
Both financial and human resource costs of this option are relatively large. Funding new programmes
and employing the staff to manage them, separately from existing DFID-funded interventions, would
require considerable input both centrally and from country offices. While a central fund would have
the potential to attract greater country office attention, visibility of the resilience agenda is already
high and stand-alone resilience projects would give the wrong signal.
D. What measures can be used to assess Value for Money for the intervention?
There are two levels for assessing VfM in this intervention: at the level of the individual research
investments and for the strategy as a whole.
For individual investments to be approved, the management board will, using information provided in
the application template, apply the following VFM assessment criteria:
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Is there a clear understanding of the problem/issues to be addressed through the research or
intervention?
Is the proposed approach appropriate, efficient, effective and economic? Have alternative
approaches been considered?
Does the project have real potential for impact? Is the results chain clear?
Have the key risks been fully discussed?
Have all costs been fully identified?
How will the investment be evaluated?
For the intervention as a whole, the following key value for money indicators will be assessed
annually:
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Progress of DFID country offices against the Minimum Standards for Embedding Disaster
Resilience;
Progression of pilot programmes to scale;
Research impact;
Proportion of global aid allocated to measures to build resilience.
E. Summary Value for Money Statement for the preferred option
Building resilience to disasters can lead to significant efficiencies in DFID’s aid. Investing a greater
proportion of DFID’s funds in building resilience saves lives, protects our development investments
and maximises the value of our humanitarian interventions. The UK-funded “Economics of Early
Response and Resilience” indicates that in southern Ethiopia, every $1 invested in disaster resilience
would result in $2.8 of benefits. Responding to and building the growing evidence base, and working
towards the the Minimum Standards for Disaster Resilience, is therefore a way for country offices to
deliver more efficiently.
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The chosen option - the Disaster Resilience Catalytic Fund is an effective way of supporting country
offices’ progress towards the Minimum Standards. The Catalytic Fund is flexible enough to respond
to country offices’ different research and programmatic needs, and reflects the cross-cutting nature of
building resilience to disasters.
The Catalytic Fund is more economical than other interventions because of its focus on small-scale
funding: connecting or expanding existing programmes, piloting innovative new programmes and
research.
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Commercial Case
Direct procurement
A. Clearly state the procurement/commercial requirements for intervention
Reflecting the key gaps identified in our understanding and programming, the Disaster Resilience
Catalytic Fund will be available to support four types of workstream. Individuals for each of DFID’s
country programmes have assumed responsibility for contributing to DFID’s commitment to embed
resilience and will submit proposals to the management board (the structure of which is set out in the
Management Case below) which set out specific objectives and make a case for how best to deliver.
Where appropriate, DFID staff will deliver specific proposal objectives – for example by leading the
development of a disaster risk analysis for another DFID office, or by mapping the extent to which an
external partner’s existing programs are building resilience already.
In all cases, competition is central to the design of programmes which will utilise the Catalytic Fund.
B. How does the intervention design use competition to drive commercial advantage
for DFID?
By devolving responsibility for commissioning external work to DFID country office staff, the
intervention design encourages country office staff to use their knowledge and experience of local
businesses to use competition most effectively. Standard DFID procurement mechanisms and
guidelines will be applied in any use of the Catalytic Fund to ensure value for money is demonstrated
and delivered.
C. How do we expect the market place will respond to this opportunity?
This will vary depending on each individual proposal and where it is tendered; we can, however,
expect a strong market response and competition.
D. What are the key cost elements that affect overall price? How is value added and
how will we measure and improve this?
The breakdown of costs elements and cost drivers for procurement will be specific to the needs of
each individual proposal, the nature and duration of which will vary significantly. Consequently, it is
not possible to specify in advance exactly what specific proposals will look like. Each proposal
submitted to the management board will be required to provide a breakdown of inputs to be
scrutinised and approved by the board before procurement may commence. We will ensure that the
Terms of Reference developed for individual procurement competitions clearly set out the required
outputs/deliverables and that market responses are evaluated based on their cost to deliver the
specified outcomes.
E. What is the intended Procurement Process to support contract award?
See above – processes will vary by proposal. DFID Blue Book regulations and, where appropriate,
EU Public Procurement Regulations will be adhered to at all times.
Procurement competitions above the EU-set threshold (presently £113,000) will need to be
channelled through a procurement competition. However, DFID also has a number of framework
agreements with suppliers and use of thse is one way of streamlining the process.
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F. How will contract & supplier performance be managed through the life of the
intervention?
Following approval, responsibility for managing individual proposals will rest with a Project
Responsible Officer (PRO), designated according to the demands of the project and where it is
predominantly based. The PRO will be responsible for communicating progress updates against
detailed measurement of results to the management board, overseeing delivery of the project and
managing DFID’s relationship with the supplier (if applicable). This includes completing DFID’s
standard monitoring and evaluation procedures.
Indirect procurement
A. Why is the proposed funding mechanism/form of arrangement the right one for this
intervention, with this development partner?
Not applicable, all interventions will be channelled through procurement competition, using existing
frameworks where possible.
B. Value for money through procurement
Not applicable
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Financial Case
A. What are the costs, how are they profiled and how will you ensure accurate
forecasting?
2012/2013
£ 600,000
2012/2013
P1
P2
2013/2014
£ 2.0 million
P3
P4
P5
P6
2014/2015
£ 1.4 million
P7
P8
100k
P9
100k
P10
100k
P11
150k
P12
150k
Precise forecasting is a challenge considering that we cannot predict with certainty the number or
size of successful proposals that will be made to the fund. To counteract this:
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CHASE started to canvass country office opinion in November 2011 on what support they
would need in order to embed disaster resilience into country programmes.
CHASE has maintained frequent communication with country offices, expected to represent
the principle source of proposals - allowing CHASE to assess on a rolling basis the overall
scale of demand.
B. How will it be funded: capital/programme/admin?
All funds will be drawn from CHASE programme budget.
C. How will funds be paid out?
CHASE will fund some proposals directly. Others, requiring country office oversight, will be more
effective if funded via the country office.
D. What is the assessment of financial risk and fraud?
Where proposals are led by DFID staff, the financial/fraud risks are judged to be low and mitigated by
implementing relevant DFID anti-corruption and fraud policies.
Where proposals take place through external procurement, they will be led by individuals who are
closest to the market concerned. This will encourage the use of trusted partners with whom DFID has
an established and reliable working relationship.
The management board will consider the risks of specific proposals on a case-by-case basis.
E. How will expenditure be monitored, reported, and accounted for?
The Project Responsible Officer for each proposal will feed information on expenditure and results to
the management board and the CHASE financial officer, who together will produce a short annual
report on expenditure.
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Management Case
A. What are the Management Arrangements for implementing the intervention?
The deputy head of CHASE and two Senior Disaster Resilience Advisers from the CHASE
Humanitarian and Disaster Resilience Policy Group will form the core of a management board
responsible for scrutinising each funding proposal and overseeing implementation. When considering
proposals from a country office, the core members of the management board will be joined by a senior
adviser or deputy director from the regional department of DFID responsible for the country office in
question.
Funding proposals will use a standard application template which requests information on the nature of
the proposed intervention and how it will be carried out, managed, financed and evaluated.
All applications will be required to provide a completed application template. The Catalytic Fund
management board will prioritise applications which demonstrate their direct contribution to meeting the
Minimum Standards for Disaster Resilience.
B. What are the risks and how these will be managed?
Country office proposals may not take account of wider programming or research being carried out in
other DFID offices. Subjecting each proposal to central oversight from CHASE and regional oversight
from relevant regional staff will make it more likely that duplication is identified at the planning stage.
C. What conditions apply (for financial aid only)?
N/A
D. How will progress and results be monitored, measured and evaluated?
The application template for each proposal will set out individual monitoring requirements. These will
feed into the overall Catalytic Fund log frame, used for reporting to the management board.
Outputs will be collected together to produce a quarterly report for sign-off from the head of CHASE.
Lograme
Quest No of logframe for this intervention:
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