The United Nations said on Wednesday that it wanted the world to be covered by weather disaster early warning systems within five years to protect people from the worsening impacts of climate change.
Third-world people, mainly in the least-developed countries and developing small island states, are without early warning coverage, the United Nations said, emphasising that 60 percent of people in Africa were widely open to weather catastrophes.
It was gathered the plan would cost $1.5 billion, but the UN insisted it would be money well spent compared to the devastation wrought by meteorological disasters.
“The United Nations will spearhead new action to ensure every person on Earth is protected by early warning systems within five years,” UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, announced, launching the plan on World Meteorological Day.
Proper early warning systems for floods, droughts, heatwaves, or storms would allow people to know that hazardous weather was coming, and set out plans for what governments and individuals should do to minimise the impacts.
“Each increment of global heating will further increase the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events.
“Early warning systems save lives. Let us ensure they are working for everyone,” said Guterres.
The organisation believed the investment would save countless lives, protect the most vulnerable, and make good economic sense.
The WMO said the number of weather disasters it recorded went up fivefold from 1970 to 2019, due to climate change and an increased number of extreme weather events, but also improved monitoring.
“Thanks to better warnings, the number of lives lost decreased almost three-fold over the same period,” the organisation said.
The 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change, struck at the COP21 summit, called for capping global warming at well below two degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial (1850-1900) level, and ideally closer to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
Guterres said it was vital to limit global temperature rises to 1.5 C as the hotter the planet gets, the greater the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events.
“Keeping 1.5 alive requires a 45 percent reduction in global emissions by 2030 to reach carbon neutrality by mid-century,” he said.
It was also feared that as countries turned away from Russian oil and gas following the Kremlin-ordered war in Ukraine, short-term alternatives would end up becoming new, long-term deals that locked in fossil fuel dependency, putting the final nail in the coffin for the 1.5 degrees Celsius target.
AFP
