The World Meteorological Organization(WMO) — the United Nations’ authoritative voice on weather, climate and water — has recommended setting up of a Global System for Climate Services which will help countries understand and adapt to climate change and reduce the risk of natural disasters, saving lives and livelihoods. WMO is billed as one of the most important initiatives, and only next to the Kyoto Protocol and Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change.
Economic losses from flash floods, cyclones, tsunamis, earthquakes and other natural calamities amount to about $100 billion annually, and growing at a fast clip. The loss can impede the pace of development by years, if not decades. Climate change is likely to increase the intensity and frequency of natural disasters. To make matters worse, more people will become vulnerable because of population growth.
The UN commissioned taskforce, which submitted its report on Thursday at a disaster risk reduction meet here, has estimated that the new initiative will cost the UN donor countries about $60 million annually for four years from 2014 onwards. The task force was constituted at the 3rd World Climate Conference in 2009, and the Geneva recommendations are to be endorsed at the XVI World Meteorological Congress, which begins on May 16.
Jan Egeland, co-chairman of the 12-member task force, said 13 regional centres would be set up — one of which could in India — apart from capacity building in 70 countries that don’t have any physical infrastructure to assess climatic variations.
“The modest investment will help us revolutionize the knowledge and facts available for climate vulnerable communities. We will save lives, prevent disasters and make agriculture, health and water services more robust,” Egeland said.
The report was presented at the Global Platform on Disaster Risk Reduction — the UN gathering on reducing disaster risk and building the resilience of communities. WMO is an active participant in the Global Platform because of its extensive work on disaster risk reduction, which was singled out as one of the priorities by the task force’s report.
It gave specific examples of how disaster risk can be reduced by active policies based on scientific information. For instance, in China, an estimated two million died in the July 1959 floods, but over the recent decade (2000-2009) the average recorded annual death toll has fallen to 577. This is largely because of the development of flood monitoring and early warning systems coupled with effective rescue operations.
The report also cited the example of the Great Horn of Africa, Bangladesh, China and India, where millions of people died from famine in the 20th century, but the death toll has been reduced or even eliminated, thanks to food security programmes. These combine surveillance and early warning information about the climate, agriculture as well as household status and food markets — integrating the results with national and international food aid mechanisms. Seasonal outlooks are routinely used by governments in many countries to prepare for possible hard times, and to avoid turning a harsh climatic event into a disaster.
The foundations for a global system for climate services are available in WMO’s existing structure and networks, and can be developed and built upon. These include the existing weather and climate observing systems and data exchange, climate research programmes and risk management techniques used in different economic and social sectors. National Meteorological and Hydrological Services have a key position in climate services because of their core competence in weather observations and early warning systems.
What is lacking is a framework to link and develop the available elements and to plug the gaps, fix the shortcomings and create new capacity in developing countries that are most vulnerable to climate change. More than one-third of countries are unable to provide much more than the most basic climate services, and a few are unable to provide even at this level.
“We need to strengthen research in all parts of the world. We need to develop more appropriate services for climate, similar to what we develop for weather services. There is no way any country can do it alone, not even the biggest one. We need a multi-lateral, multi-disciplinary system,” said Michel Jarraud, secretary-general of WMO.
