Such an approach is bound to reduce targeting, for there is little attention to cause and to the location of effect. But if we want policymakers to look at different types of data, we have to ask how good the data are, how appropriate they are, and what the appropriate response to the data would be. It is not useful, for instance, to deliver, as relief, dry foods that require mixing with water to people in areas that have little or no water, as happened in the Venda area of South Africa in 1992. Drought has multifarious and interacting effects which are best analyzed together for appropriate action. Even with the political will behind them, there is the problem of inertia.
Few countries appear able to plan forward well.
Partly, it is a problem of lack of accountability. Partly, it is choice about which actions will have the best returns to my time and energy today. Once again, it seems that the best response is to get the data and the analysis into the public domain, to initiate pressures from outside the government. This is difficult in a secretive government, or in one like South Africa, which has much preferred not to know the results of drought, or of policy itself, on the poor and their access to food. I do not pretend to have the answers.