(Sharm el-Sheikh) The United Nations unveiled on Monday an action plan costing more than 3 billion dollars so that within five years, the entire world population will be protected by an early warning network. weather disasters.
Posted at 11:12 a.m.
“Vulnerable communities in areas sensitive to global warming are taken aback by cascading climatic disasters, without any means of preventive warning,” UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres commented on Monday at COP27 in Egypt.
“People in Africa, South Asia, Central and South America, and people in small island states are 15 times more likely to die in a climate catastrophe,” he added.
So last March, he announced the ambitious goal that within five years, everyone on Earth will be warned of the imminence of danger when torrential rains, cyclones or other extreme weather events approach. frequent or strong due to global warming.
“Early warnings save lives and provide huge economic benefits. All you have to do is report the arrival of a dangerous phenomenon 24 hours in advance to reduce the ensuing damage by 30%,” noted Petteri Taalas, Secretary General of the World Meteorological Organization, which drew up this emergency plan. ‘stock.
But half of the countries lack preparation. Less than half of least developed countries and only a third of small island developing states have a multi-hazard early warning system, according to a recent report by WMO and the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction. ‘UN.
To achieve the objective, it would be necessary to invest 3.1 billion dollars between 2023 and 2027, “a paltry sum in view of the benefits”, commented the UN on Monday.
For example, the Global Commission on Adaptation estimated that spending $800 million on such systems in developing countries would avoid losses of between $3 billion and $16 billion a year, according to the statement.
The 3.1 billion, which remains to be financed within the framework of the hoped-for increase in financing linked to adaptation to the impacts of global warming, would be intended for 4 sectors: better knowledge of disaster risks, establishment of monitoring and warning systems, building capacity to act on the ground and transmitting risk information to all those who need it.