Co-investment platform on climate information and early warning systems (CIEWS) established
Between 1970 and 2019, 79% of disasters globally involved weather, water and climate-related hazards. These disasters accounted for 56% of deaths and 75% of reported economic losses associated with natural hazard events. The intensity and frequency of climate-related disasters are expected to increase as climate change intensifies, posing a significant risk to the achievement of the goals of the Paris Agreement, the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction and Sustainable Development in general.
Within that context, the United Nations Secretary-General, António Guterres, announced an ambitious new goal to ensure every person on Earth is protected by early warning systems by 2027 through the “Early Warning for All - EW4All” initiative. To achieve this, investments will have to be made in all aspects of the information value chain, from building and strengthening observation networks, developing risk-informed and impact forecasting tailored products, improving communications and information sharing, to building services for communities, decision-makers, and businesses to use and understand weather and climate-related information.
The importance of both climate information and early warning systems (CIEWS) has been increasingly emphasized globally and has become an integral component of climate change adaptation. CIEWS are vital in reducing exposure and vulnerability to the impacts of climate change and building climate change resilience. The scaling-up of CIEWS combined with disaster risk reduction and management has been shown to reduce the number of deaths in areas affected by major disasters.
CAF -the Development Bank of Latin American and the Caribbean-, together with the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR), the Green Climate Fund, and other institutional partners are structuring a regional facility that will support LAC countries to formulate national and regional projects on “Climate Information and Early Warning Systems (CIEWS)” that will be submitted for finance/co-finance to the GCF.
The Platform will operate on the basis and recognition of the vast experience and ongoing progress on CIEWS initiatives that are taking place in the region, and will be centered on three main components: (a) Foster enabling conditions, through regional outreach campaigns, focused on both advancing regional cooperation and inter-operability of CIEWS, and seeking additional financial support; (b) Undertake country-level priority actions, focused on capacity building and strengthening governance; and (c) accelerate the formulation of CIEWS projects.
For Latin America and the Caribbean, this platform will represent a decisive contribution in the search for strengthening disaster risk knowledge, monitoring and forecasting, warning dissemination and alert, and preparation and response to emergencies and disasters. In just the last two years, the landscape of losses and damages caused by forest fires, droughts, floods, landslides and storms in the region has made it clear that ambitious investment actions, of regional scope, are urgently needed, such as those contemplated in this initiative.