To help anticipate natural disasters linked to climate change, the United Nations has decided to act. Hard hit by the devastating impacts of climate change, developing and island countries also face inadequate meteorological data to predict them.
To fill this gap, the United Nations (UNDP and UNEP) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) on Wednesday launched a mechanism for financing meteorological observations, which will be operational from June 2022.
Benefits “in terms of lives saved”
This funding mechanism for systematic observations “will bring tangible benefits in terms of lives saved, improved disaster management, livelihoods, biodiversity, access to water and economic growth,” said the Minister. Head of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), Inger Andersen. It will also feed into meteorological observations and thus improve global forecasts, climate information and early warning systems.
However, “even ambitious emission reduction measures will not allow us to escape the significant impacts of climate change for decades to come”, procrastinates Ulisses Correia e Silva, Prime Minister of Cape Verde, an island state off the coast of France. Africa, home to some of the most powerful Atlantic cyclones. “But we can’t adapt properly if we can’t predict correctly. And we can’t predict if we don’t have enough data ”.
Currently, poor countries or small island states have access to less than 10% of basic weather and climate observations, according to WMO Secretary General Petteri Taalas. During its first three years of life, the financing mechanism will therefore provide support to 55 countries, notably through the rehabilitation of some 400 data collection stations.