Hit hard by the devastating impacts of climate change, developing and island countries also face inadequate meteorological data to predict them, a problem that international institutions including the UN want to remedy.
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.
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This systematic observation funding mechanism "will bring tangible benefits in terms of lives saved, improved disaster management, livelihoods, biodiversity, access to water and economic growth," said the head of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), Inger Andersen, in a statement.
It will also feed into meteorological observations and thus improve global forecasts, climate information and early warning systems.
Predict to adapt
"Even ambitious emission reduction measures will not allow us to escape the significant impacts of climate change for decades to come", underlined Ulisses Correia e Silva, Prime Minister of Cape Verde, an island state off the coast of the Africa, where more powerful Atlantic cyclones are born which sometimes move towards Haiti.
“But we can't adapt properly if we can't predict correctly.
And we can't predict if we don't have enough data, ”he said.
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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 provide support to 55 countries, notably through the rehabilitation of some 400 data collection stations.