October 13 marked the International Day for Disaster Risk Reduction. It serves as a reminder that the cost of inaction is growing, with investment in building resilience to climate change and disasters chronically underfunded.
According to the United Nations, less than 2% of international aid projects have disaster risk reduction as an objective, and less than 1% of public budgets are allocated to it. Yet we know that climate change is increasing the scale and frequency of disasters, and investment in reducing disaster risk, saves lives and safeguards hard-won gains, particularly in gender equality.
The UN has put Early Warnings for All as one of the key priorities for reducing disaster risk, aiming to ensure that every person on the planet is protected by an early warning system by 2027. This ambition is grounded in evidence: an early warning of just 24 hours can reduce potential damages by up to 30%. However, achieving this target is not just a technological challenge, it is a social, cultural, and political one. The systems that save lives must also reach the most marginalised, including women and girls, and be trusted by communities.
Across the Pacific, women are showing the world how this can be done. In Vanuatu, Fiji, Tonga, Papua New Guinea and Bougainville, the Shifting the Power Coalition – a network of Pacific women’s rights organisations supported by ActionAid – is building innovative, women-led early warning and response systems. In Vanuatu, the Women Wetem Weta network, led by ActionAid Vanuatu, now reaches more than half of the population through the Digicel network and a phone tree network of 5000 women. In Bougainville, the Meri Gat Infomasen, Meri Gat Pawa system reached 3.5 million people with COVID-19 prevention and response messages, building on the Bougainville Women’s Federation’s grassroots network of women.
These systems work because they are locally owned and designed by women for their own communities. They provide messages in local languages like Bislama and Tok Pisin, combining mobile technology and climate science with indigenous knowledge to deliver accessible, actionable information that helps communities prepare for cyclones, floods, earthquakes and other hazards. Importantly, they are inclusive: women with disabilities are among the 40 women leaders at the forefront of the Women Wetem Weta network, ensuring that alerts and responses are accessible to all.
An impact assessment of Women Wetem Weta found that every dollar invested saved $4.40 in disaster losses, demonstrating that women-led systems are not only effective but also economically smart. Beyond the numbers, these systems are transforming gender norms: women leaders are gaining respect and authority in their communities, influencing government policy and services, and inspiring the next generation of young women to see themselves as leaders in disaster preparedness and response.
The barriers to inclusive early warning systems include assumptions that marginalised communities are passive recipients rather than agents of change, capable of driving their early warning systems. Government-led systems are often overly technical or inaccessible; and we continue to see the chronic underfunding of community-led initiatives that have proven their worth. But the solutions are also clear: we need to invest in local leadership, embed community systems within national emergency operations, and ensure that technology serves people, not the other way around.
As governments and donors mobilise around the Early Warnings for All agenda, the Pacific experience offers powerful lessons. When women lead early warning systems, they do more than save lives. They strengthen resilience, reduce losses, and drive gender equality. Achieving early warning for all by 2027 requires listening to, trusting, and investing in women already leading the way.