The Philippines is one of the most disaster-prone countries worldwide. In November 2025, the country had to battle two subsequent tropical cyclones within days of one another – Typhoon Kalmaegi (Tino), which affected 5.5 million people and displaced 263,712 across 9 regions, and Super Typhoon Fung-Wong (Uwan), which affected 7.9 million people and left 355,992 million displaced across 16 regions many of which were already battered by Tino. This, on the back of other devasting and subsequent events, including two earthquakes, stretching national and local responders to their limits. Hanna Paulose, OCHA Financing and Outreach Division, explains how evidence shows the urgency of acting ahead of a disaster rather than waiting for it to leave millions in desperate need.
Tell us about Anticipatory Action in this context.
In September 2025, the Philippines took a landmark step toward forecast-based action by passing the “State of Imminent Disaster” law—the first in the world to authorize the use of national and local resources for anticipatory action. Just two months later, this broader commitment to acting ahead of crises was tested when Typhoons Tino and Uwan struck in rapid succession. That is when pre-existing anticipatory action plans, aligned with the new law, proved essential in protecting lives across the country.
Three days before projected landfall, forecasts showed Uwan’s windspeed exceeding 185 kilometers per hour, meeting the threshold for the anticipatory action framework. Within two minutes of confirming the activation, the OCHA-managed UN Global Emergency Fund (CERF) released nearly US$6M so that agencies and partners could begin supporting vulnerable people before conditions deteriorated, preparing them for the worst.
Despite the obvious constraints, humanitarian partners were able to mobilize ahead of landfall, demonstrating the added value of anticipatory action. For instance, IOM deployed modular tents in Cagayan, Aurora, and Isabela, giving families safer shelter before the storm. FAO helped communities secure boats, equipment, and crops. Various UN agencies prepared multipurpose cash for immediate release. WFP alone reached 42,100 families through its anticipatory financing mechanism, while UNICEF and UNFPA were assisting the most vulnerable populations including pregnant, adolescent, and at-risk women and girls. All this, while local NGOs were providing critical early cash and shelter kits. You can see how combined, these layered actions greatly reduced losses, proving that anticipatory approaches save time and lives even in areas where advanced groundwork had been limited.
How did anticipatory action work in practice?
In the Philippines context, where disasters overlap leaving no time for communities to recover, large-scale pre-emptive evacuations proved the most critical outcome of early warning and government action. Over 1.5 million people were evacuated ahead of Uwan’s landfall, reflecting a nationwide effort to move communities to safer ground before conditions deteriorated. And although the storm caused extensive damage, casualties remained comparatively low – with 213 deaths following Tino and 33 following Uwan. Without the actions that followed the anticipatory action trigger, the loss of lives would've been exponentially higher, as previous disasters sadly show.
