The initiative aims to provide a warning system that protects the population of the planet from these disasters by 2027, especially after the disasters that have hit many countries with frequent floods, droughts and hurricanes and with a rare intensity over the past five years.
UN World Meteorological Organization Services Director Johan Stander has previously said the initiative depends on the lives of anyone endangered by environmental disasters being saved.
An ambitious initiative
Environmental expert Ayman Kaddouri calls the international initiative “ambitious” for “Sky News Arabia”, explaining its importance. He pursues :
The idea of setting up early warning systems emerged in 2015 at the Paris Climate Summit, and was taken up in the recommendations of the conference. The Paris Agreement called on States Parties and Member Nations United, about 193 countries, to ratify it. Unfortunately, the Paris summit was marred by the reluctance of major industrialized countries to sign the agreement, which could have moved the issue of climate change towards better scenarios than the world has seen in the past five years. Then, at the 2021 Glasgow Summit and the 2022 Sharm el-Sheikh Summit, the United Nations again called for endorsement of the early warning plan, and the response this time was greater. This prompted the United Nations to commission an organization to continue work on setting up an early warning system and to extend the experience to all parts of the planet. The best that this system brings is to propose immediate measures to evacuate the population to safe areas at least 24 hours before the disaster occurs; This means saving lives and reducing losses to 30-40%, thus preventing the occurrence of economic crises accompanying environmental disasters.
barriers to dissemination
However, despite the vitality and necessity of the initiative, it faces obstacles, whether related to its capacities or to the capacities of many countries, including, according to Qaduri:
The early warning system remains within a limited prediction range, and will be limited to disasters resulting from meteorological disturbances (temperature, storms and droughts) and hydrological disturbances that cause floods and their after-effects. Nearly a third of the world’s population, especially the least developed countries, have difficulty obtaining coverage from early warning systems due to their lack of internet coverage and the lack of satellites to link these countries within of the system. It relies on sending messages via social networks, emails and audio and video broadcasts to the population. The situation is even worse in Africa, where 60% of the population is not covered, in 26 countries. Likewise, the primitiveness of certain meteorological systems in certain countries, and the lack of digitization of these systems. The basis of the early warning system has been meteorological data, future forecasts and digital archives for more than 50 years.
For all the above, the environmental expert asks the meteorological organization to facilitate the resolution of the challenges of setting up an early warning system within the next five years, which is the deadline set by the United Nations.
Encouraging indicators
The environmental expert hopes that the initiative will gain new momentum at the “COP28” climate summit, scheduled for the UAE next November, during which work on the early warning system file will be assessed.
Kadouri points out that there are successful and encouraging experiences in using this system, including Bangladesh, which has become a pioneer in this field, and has managed to reduce deaths from the floods that hit it by 500 000 people in 1970 during the events of Cyclone Bola, to less than 100 people in 2020 in Cyclone Amphan.
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