By Kimberly Ramkhalawan
May 23, 2023
Changes in current climate patterns are calling for more established early warning systems. This was the focus of the 19th World Meteorological Organisation’s congress meeting currently ongoing in Geneva, Switzerland. And representing the region is the Barbados Meteorological Service, benefactors of the most recently launched Early Warning Systems in the Caribbean, with its Chief Meteorological Officer Sabu Best, who addressed the WMO Congress on why ‘Early Warning System for all’ are critical in mitigating the effects of climate change among small island states. The latest call from Barbados on the international scale, comes following COP 27 where commitments were called to initiatives such as loss and damage fund.
Sabu Best
In stating why it was important for Barbados to be part of the latest Early warning systems, Best simply articulated it as being one of the most essential services offered to its countries. The Barbados CMO continued in his presentation sharing how important it was to receive additional global support from renowned respected international bodies acting on behalf or alignment of met services across the world, and noted that this too would assist in promoting the work being done by campaigns initiated by entities like the academia as well as the private and public sectors. It is this kind of support Best says ‘enables Barbados and national meteorological services and other early warning centers to strengthen existing, encourage and accelerate development and strategically plan new early warning systems’. Bringing into perspective just how global development continues to accelerate directions even in areas like the Caribbean, Best notes that current systems that have been in existence for many decades as nothing new in foreign territories, but are viewed as new to the region. To this he pointed to an initiative from the Barbados perspective, where each member can become an originating source of the development as it embarks on a new business model in relation to early warning systems, where it is able to ‘effect the implementation and achieve astonishing sustainable systems’.
Barbados is one of thirty countries earmarked for the global initiative being the furthest east Caribbean Island that is strategic in providing early warning information to support members downstream to the north Atlantic.
The BMS CMO in highlighting this, says was not to boast of Barbados, or “what it has or will accomplish in the coming months, but to highlight how a strategic business model that encompasses early warning systems for all, will not only help individual nations, but help its neighbours and the global early warning systems in its entirety.”
To this, Best likened how the entire system worked as a single global one, from where it served individually, with service to person as part of the system, service to stakeholder as another, country to regionally, and collectively from a WMO and UNDRR perspective, all serving as one global system. Through working together in advancing early warning systems to where it is now and to where it will Best says it is critical that national meteorological services “embrace the unparallel guidance and work the WMO and other regional organisations such as CMO and CMH, over the past few years in particular has provided to members in the region forward”.
The planning and orchestrating of many WMO initiatives, mandates and calls for financial opportunities for sustainable development of national meteorological services, particularly in least and small island developing states, to which Best in his presentation shared, “laid an essential foundation and provides the brick and mortar for early warning for all. It is this global flag ship leadership that WMO and other international partners and all of its members must continue to enrich”.
However, the Barbadian CMO called for the WMO through its various establishments, committees, to continue to review and share access to its best practices along with existing technologies and most importantly trends emanating from members of academia, and the private sector., if its leadership is to be essential in the successful implementation for early warning for all.
Professor Petteri Taalas, Secretary-General of WMO remarked that based on research done by the WMO, 28 million in Latin America and the Caribbean face food insecurity because of exacerbated Hydrometeorological hazards.
Professor Taalas shared that early warning systems work when there is sufficiently trained staff stationed at the national level, highlighting global basic observation gaps among SIDS and LDCs. Showcasing just how large the gap was when it came to Small island developing states, SIDS, and Least developed countries, LDCs, the professor share that among the 596 surface stations on the existing network only provided nine percent of the required observations, while there were 139 upper air observations among these countries, where only eight percent operated in providing the needed information.
Professor Taalas shared that globally in the last forty years, the world has spend $4.3 trillion in losses resulting from natural disasters. And while the WMO is working with the UNDRR in creating a joint centre on excellence on disaster risk reduction, along with software systemic observation financing facility in place in Geneva, it still requires locating US$3.1 billion for hydrometeorological activities.
From the soft side, he says there are already 26 countries where they have started making the investments that will also be utilizing the expertise of developed countries along with south to south met services as advisors for the programmes, with the next steering committee meeting on this carded for the next four weeks in Copenhagen before decisions are made on which countries will be targeted next.
He says with this it will be required for countries to invest in IT infrastructure, forecast products for the 33 centres that will be utilized for providing its services effectively for farmers, effective air traffic control management, emergency management, marine transport operators, as well as NFC companies and other industries. Professor Taalas says a technical commission support is expected to contribute to its success, while the infrastructure commission has been setting standards along with a new data policy and a software program. He is hopeful the service commission will set standards for the early warning services, so that countries can say when they have become compliant.
To the SG Professor Taalas, “early warning systems are more than just a great opportunity for all, and likens it to a mission to the moon, where all is needed to make it a successful one”.
Selwin Hart, Special Advisor to the UNSG on Climate Action shared why it was so important to close the gaps along the early warning systems value chain and to the Acceleration Agenda as put forward by UN SG Antonio Guterres, which calls for all countries to rapidly reduce emissions and deliver climate justice.
Hart reminded those gathered that so far 30 countries have been identified for the first year of its implementation and run. With its success dependent on all participating countries cooperating and collaborating like never done before. Avoiding duplication of effort and harnessing of synergies with all relevant partners he says will remain crucial, with time being now for results to be delivered on the ground. Hart added that right now adaptation levels were being breached, leaving billions of lives hanging in the balance, with the poor, the vulnerable and the marginalized, who have done the least to cause the crisis, to suffer the most as rising temperatures wreak havoc everywhere, seeing the magnitude of losses and damages continuously growing at an exponential rate.
He says through EWS, it offers a chance for every person on earth to be protected with effective multi-hazard warning systems to be put in place by 2027. Hart also shared that disaster mortality rates were eight times lower in countries where early warning system coverage existed, with research showing that within 24 hours notification of a pending disaster, damages sustained were reduced by 30 percent.
The specialized Climate Risk and Early Warning Systems (CREWS) initiative saves lives, assets and livelihoods through increased access to early weather warnings and risk information for people in Least Developed Countries (LDCs) and Small Island Developing States (SIDS) – the world’s most vulnerable countries.
So far Australia, France, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the United Kingdom contribute to the pooled CREWS Trust Fund and provide oversight to CREWS operations through the CREWS Steering Committee.
In February this year, Barbados hosted the regional launch of the United Nations Early Warnings for All Initiative (EW4ALL) for the Caribbean, which aims at driving coordinated political action towards strengthening multi-hazard early warning systems for hazards such as hurricanes, tropical storms, tsunamis, volcanoes, floods, landslides, and epidemics.