When disasters strike, cash-strapped governments are often forced to raid their existing budgets to finance emergency relief and recovery.

Although expenditure reallocation is an important part of any government’s disaster response financing, there is very little data on its scale or cost. To fill this gap, the Centre commissioned Oxford Policy Management to follow the financing of post-covid-19 response efforts of the governments of Pakistan, Ethiopia, and South Africa.

Through this research, our aim has been to improve the evidence base around budget reallocations, and provide policy guidance that will inform governments about the costs and benefits of this approach, and the importance of including pre-arranged financing mechanisms in their disaster risk financing strategy.

Learn more about the findings here. This blog provides more detail on this work and the methods used. The cross-country synthesis report can be downloaded here. The Ethiopia brief is available here and the South Africa brief can be found here.

Header photo: World Bank / Henitsoa Rafalia