||accelerated depletion of livelihood assets that will lead to food consumption gaps.|
|---|---|
|Emergency|Even with any humanitarian assistance at least one in five HHs in the area have the<br>following or worse: Large food consumption gaps resulting in very high acute<br>malnutrition and excess mortality, OR Extreme loss of livelihood assets that will lead to<br>food consumptiongaps in the short term.|
|Famine|Even with any humanitarian assistance at least one in five HHs in the area have an<br>extreme lack of food and other basic needs where starvation, death, and destitution<br>are evident. (Evidence for all three criteria of food consumption, wasting, and CDR is<br>required to classifyFamine.)|

In Ethiopia, the IPC 2.0 scale is used by the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) in the development of food security maps. FEWS NET food security maps additionally provide information on the location of the provision of humanitarian assistance. Within Ethiopia’s broader early warning framework, the IPC system could be used to substantiate the results obtained through the existing early warning tools. Specifically, the IPC could be used to act as an overlay that could structure the decision making process to respond to droughts, particularly due to the system’s design that enables the simplification of complex information into actionable knowledge and response objectives.

# IV.7 Potential for use of early warning tools to inform early action

As outlined above, Ethiopia has a set of instruments to predict droughts, thereby enabling early action before the food security impacts of the drought become critical, that is, following the lean season (or dry season in pastoral areas) after the harvest. Based on the available early warning systems, it is possible to define triggering events that would set off a drought response. Potential triggers that could be considered include, for instance, LEAP’s intermediary outputs (WRSI or crop yield reduction estimates), or estimated beneficiary numbers based on either the LEAP or LIAS tools, or a combination thereof. In particular, by combining data obtained from the different early warning systems, it is possible to triangulate data sources to obtain a more accurate estimate of drought-related food insecurity. Based on pre-defined, objective triggers, the timeliness of drought response through Ethiopia’s PSNP could be enhanced, as detailed in section V below.

The accuracy of early warning information is dependent on the quantity and quality of input data, and the robustness of the tool’s methodology in predicting a disaster. The LEAP and LIAS tools are already based on a substantive amount of information<sup>52</sup> . However, the predictive accuracy of the tools will be enhanced further with time, as more and better data becomes available and the tools are being refined. With the development of the LEAP and LIAS tools, the GoE, WFP and wider donor community within Ethiopia have made significant advances in developing the necessary instruments to facilitate early action. The processes of further extending the LEAP tool and re-initiating the use of the HEA methodology as part of seasonal needs assessments would further enhance Ethiopia’s early warning framework, thereby facilitating early action to protect lives and livelihoods from the adverse impacts of droughts.

> 52 For instance, the LEAP tool makes use of different pre-loaded rainfall datasets, including the Rain Fall Estimate (RFE) datasets RFE 1 and RFE 2 produced by the United States Climate Prediction Center, ARC2 and TAMSAT data, as well as data produced by the NMA (Ethiopia’s National Meteorological Agency).

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