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WMO Press conference on Lauch of United in Science report 14 September 2023
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45:41
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Edited News , Press Conferences | WMO

Lack of progress to combat climate change hampers fight against poverty, hunger

ENG

STORY: Report launch: United in Science - WMO

DURATION (TRT): 3:00"

SOURCE: UNTV CH

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH/NATS

ASPECT RATIO: 16/9

DATELINE: 14 September 2023, GENEVA SWITZERLAND

 

  1. Exterior medium shot: UN flag alley, UN Geneva
  2. Wide shot: speakers at podium and attendees at the press conference, screens with speaker
  3. SOUNDBITE (English) – Petteri Taalas, WMO’s Secretary-General : “We are not going to meet climate targets and we are not going to meet the Sustainable Development Goal targets either at the current pace of action. This was a demonstration of what has happened to the emissions in various parts of the world a year ago and from 2022 to 2023”.  
  4. Medium shot: attendee at the press conference
  5. SOUNDBITE (English) – Petteri Taalas, WMO’s Secretary-General: “We have seen 12,000 disasters related to weather and there have been 2 million people who have been killed in those disasters, mostly in less developed countries, 90 per cent in less developed countries. And there has been $4.3 trillion losses and 60 per cent of those have been taking place in less developed countries.”
  6. Close up: journalist
  7. SOUNDBITE (English) – Petteri Taalas, WMO’s Secretary-General: “In the report we are demonstrating that with science and services, we can mitigate these negative impacts of climate change. At the moment, we have a major program called ‘Early Warning Services for All’. So what we aim is that in five years we would have hundred percent coverage of proper early warning services, also in less developed countries in Africa and island states.”
  8. Close up: journalist listening
  9. SOUNDBITE (English) – Petteri Taalas, WMO’s Secretary-General: “We have this record ocean heat this year, which is having impacts on ecosystems and fisheries, and it's also boosted by the acidification of the seawater since oceans serve as a sink of carbon dioxide”.
  10. Close up: journalist from behind in front of this laptop
  11. SOUNDBITE (English) – Petteri Taalas, WMO’s Secretary-General: “The negative trend in weather patterns will anyhow continue until 2060. There is no return back to last century's climate anymore and this glacier melting and sea level rise game we have already lost that. That may be a problem for the coming thousands of years because of the very high concentration of carbon dioxide. So this is a growing issue we have just seen the first impacts, but these negative impacts are gradually growing until 2060.”
  12.  Wide shot, podium with speakers
  13. SOUNDBITE (English) – Petteri Taalas, WMO’s Secretary-General: “We are not heading towards the end of the world. We are not heading towards the end of mankind, no biosphere, but we are talking about different scales of gray for the future. If we are able to reach the Paris limits of 1.5 to 2 degrees, then we could say that we will have a light gray future”.
  14. Wide shot, speakers at the podium with journalists in the press room
  15. Medium shot, attendees
  16. Wide shot, camera people

Lack of progress to combat climate change hampers fight against poverty, hunger

The world is far from meeting its climate goals, seriously undermining efforts to tackle hunger, poverty and ill-health, the UN World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said on Thursday.

Launching a new multi-agency report coordinated by the WMO, the UN agency also warned that insufficient progress towards climate goals is preventing better access to clean water and energy, and many other aspects of sustainable development.

“We are not going to meet climate targets and we are not going to meet the Sustainable Development Goal targets either at the current pace of action”, said Professor Petteri Taalas, WMO’s Secretary-General, at the UN in Geneva. “This was a demonstration of what has happened to the emissions in various parts of the world a year ago and from 2022 to 2023.” 

The report, entitled “United in Science 2023” combines input and expertise from 18 UN organizations. It notes that at the midway point of the SDG 2030 Agenda, only 15 per cent of the goals have been achieved. When the SDG Agenda was launched in 2015 in New York, the aim was “a world of universal respect for human rights and human dignity, the rule of law, justice, equality and non-discrimination”.

According to Professor Taalas between 1970 and 2021, “we have seen 12,000 disasters related to weather and there have been two million people who have been killed in those disasters, mostly in less developed countries, 90 per cent in less developed countries. And there has been $4.3 trillion losses and 60 per cent of those have been taking place in less developed countries.”

The report underlines that science is central to find solutions to many of the current challenges the world faces.

“In the report we are demonstrating that with science and services, we can mitigate these negative impacts of climate change”, said the WMO chief. “At the moment, we have a major program called ‘Early Warning Services for All’. So what we aim is that in five years we would have 100 per cent coverage of proper early warning services, also in less developed countries in Africa and island states.”

The report shows how weather forecasting helps to boost food production and efforts to end hunger. Early warning-systems help to reduce poverty by giving people the change to prepare and limit the impact.

The need for science and solutions is more urgent than ever; 2023 has shown that climate change is here with record temperatures and extreme weather causing havoc around the globe.

“We have this record ocean heat this year, which is having impacts on ecosystems and fisheries, and it's also boosted by the acidification of the seawater since oceans serve as a sink of carbon dioxide,” said Professor Taalas.

Some future changes in climate are unavoidable, and potentially irreversible, but every fraction of a degree and every ton of CO2 matters if global warming is to be slowed and the SDGs achieved, says the report.

“The negative trend in weather patterns will anyhow continue until 2060,” said Professor Taalas. “There is no return back to last century's climate anymore and this glacier melting and sea level rise game we have already lost”. He added that “may be a problem for the coming thousands of years because of the very high concentration of carbon dioxide. So this is a growing issue we have just seen the first impacts, but these negative impacts are gradually growing until 2060.”

There is now a 98 per cent chance that one of the next five years will be the warmest on record, according to the WMO, and it quotes the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projection that long-term warming may reach the Paris level of 1.5C “in the early 2030s”.

However, WMO chief stressed that humankind is “not heading towards the end of the world. We are not heading towards the end of mankind, no biosphere, but we are talking about different scales of gray for the future. If we are able to reach the Paris limits of 1.5 to 2 degrees, then we could say that we will have a light gray future”.

The United in Science report was issued ahead of the SDG Summit and the Climate Action Summit which takes place at the UN General Assembly next week.

-ends-

 

Teleprompter
Good morning dear media representatives.
Bonjour Madame de Monsieur le Represent on de La Presse.
the United in Science report we are launching today is a multi agency report, 17 agencies contributed from the UN and it is coordinated, was coordinated by the World Meteorological Organisation.
2023 is marking the halfway point to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.
As you know, the upcoming SDG Action Weekend and the UNSDG Summit that will take place in New York next week will provide a great opportunity for heads of states, for governments and stakeholders, including the scientific community to mobilise and accelerate efforts to achieve the SDGS.
This new United in Science report is focusing this year on the SDGS actually.
It provides, as always, an overview of the current state of the science and it highlights the crucial role weather, climate and water related sciences are playing for sustainable development.
We have with us today WMO Secretary General Professor Petri Talas, who will present now the main findings of this report.
Mr Talas Lefroe is yours.
Thank you Brisit and welcome also on my behalf.
And, and we, we are used to deliver your bad news and I will continue along the same same lines.
Also also today we have classically published these reports just before the United Nations in our Assembly meeting, which will take place next week in New York.
And, and, and there will be also dedicated Climate action summit hosted by Secretary and Guterres and I will be also one of the, one of the speakers there.
And last week we had climate summit in, in, in Nairobi dealing with climate and Africa issues.
And, and, and of course, we are now heading towards COP 28.
And, and, and this is going to be also one of the inputs for such such event.
And we will publish also the preliminary status of climate report just before the COP meeting to, to stimulate the negotiators there.
That has been our our practise.
From 21 to 22 we saw 1% increase of the global carbon emissions and and from 22 to this year it seems that that we are we are all fairly flat.
So there hasn't been major growth of the emissions, but if you look look at the various regions, we have seen a decline of the emissions in Europe and also in North America.
But but for example in India, China and Russia, the emissions have been growing both both a year ago and and also coming to this this year.
And actually these G20 countries, they are responsible for 80% of the emissions and, and the action from, from, from that group's side is critical for the success of of Paris agreement implementation in meteorology.
We have just moved from Lanina, yes, which which we're calling the Pacific temperatures to El Nino.
And, and it's even possible that this year may be the warmest year on, on record.
And we also have record temperatures in the, in the Atlantic Ocean at the at the moment.
And, and it's practically sure that during the coming five years we will hit for sure this global record and, and, and there's 66% chance that we would be hitting 1.5° at least on temporary basis.
So we are, we are fairly close to the, to the lower limit of Paris agreement with the with the climate models, we have been able to estimate what's going to happen to the average climate, to temperatures prehibitation and and so forth.
But we are, we are not able to say too much about the weather extremes and the impacts of climate change.
They are very much felt through these extremes.
And at the moment we have crises going on in Libya with, with even more than 10,000 casualties.
And, and one reason we have for that is that the, the meteorological service in Libya hasn't been functioning thanks to the, the, the chaotic situation of the administration in Libya.
And actually we have, we are facing the same situation in Sudan at the moment.
I met Sudan, met service director last week in, in Nairobi and she told that most of the people have escaped Khartoum and, and they are not able to, to forecast this kind of **** impact weather events anymore.
And this report that we are, we are, we are just publishing is related to impacts of climate change on sustainable development goals.
And in the report, we are showing that practically all of the sustainable development goals are affected by, by climate change.
And, and, and of course, the net impact is, is, is, is negative.
And, and, and, and, and we have also this economy challenges why we are not going to meet the 2030 targets.
And, and also the war in Ukraine has had an impact.
And, and, and, and finally also growth of population, especially in Africa is, is having a negative impact.
From that perspective, during the past 50 years, we have seen 12,000 disasters related to weather and, and, and there have been 2 million people who have been killed in those disasters, mostly in in less developed countries, 90% in less developed countries and there has been $4.3 trillion losses and 60% of those have been taking place in less developed countries.
And we have been showing that the the island states are more sensitive there.
The economies may be dropping more than several hundreds of percents after a hurricane or cyclone or, or typhoon hit.
And in less developed countries, for example, typically in African countries, we have seen GDP losses between 10 and 20%.
And in richest countries, it's, it's the impacts have been fairly marginal, keeping in mind the size of economies, although the most expensive ones have been hitting USA and, and China.
And we are in, in the report we are demonstrating that with science and and services, we can, we can mitigate these negative impacts of climate change.
And at the moment we have a major programme called Early warning Services for all.
So that we, our aim is that in five years we would have 100% coverage of proper early warning services also in less developed countries in Africa and island states.
And we are talking about multi hazard early warning services and, and we are also promoting impact based forecasting that we are not not only forecasting the, the, the weather parameters, but what kind of impact it's going to have on various sectors is that the, the safety authorities are not acting.
And that was the case, of course, in Libya recently, but it was also two years ago in, in, in, in Germany and, and also in, in Mozambique.
We have seen cases where the forecast was OK, but, but there was no, no, no action.
And as a, as a science community, we also promoting new type of climate modelling to go to kilometre scale climate modelling.
And then we would be able to say something more about these weather extremes.
And that's one of our, our programmes.
There's been an increase of the hunger, hunger problem.
We, we saw long term positive trend.
But during the recent years, it has turned to be -1.
And, and in the report, we are showing that Latin American countries widely, most African countries and many South Asian countries and Middle East countries, and also recently also Ukraine is, is, is at risk of more serious hunger problem.
And, and this is very much coming through water.
It's, it's, it's, it's related to flooding and drought problem.
And this negative trend in those, those issues will continue until 2:00 to the 60s.
And then we have this long term challenge with the glacier melting, which is going to lead to water, water stress and lack of water worldwide by the end of this this century.
And urbanisation is also one of the global trends and that's also tackled in this report.
Once we have more people living in urban areas, the risks of, of, of, of disasters is growing.
And, and this was sort of the case also in, in Libya during the recent days and flooding, heat waves, storms there that therefore felt more seriously in urban areas.
And of course, we have also this air quality problem, which is, which is very common in big cities.
We have this record ocean heat this year, which is having impacts on, on ecosystems and fisheries.
And, and it's also boosted by the acidification of the, of the sea water, since ocean serves as a sink of, of carbon, carbon dioxide.
At the moment we are heading towards 2.8° warming by the end of this century, not yet towards 1.52.
This will be the Paris targets.
But there's also hope that there's growing investments going on in, in renewable energy, solar, wind, hydropower.
And also there are, there are, there's new nuclear energy built in in countries like China and the prices of electric cars and batteries they're dropping.
And for example, I learned last week in Kenya that 93% of the NHC production in Kenya is already renewable.
So even outside of the richest countries, positive things are things are happening and especially Europe and, and North America has been selling good, good progress.
And recently we learned that, that we expected to see the peak of emissions taking place around to the 2030, but it's now likely that it will happen several years earlier.
So which is good news.
But of course, we have to turn this this to almost 0 emissions by 2050 to reach the Paris targets.
That's in a nutshell the the the contents of this this report I could show some slides as well.
So to prove that what I said, this can be demonstrated in in graphical form as well.
Can you allow me to share the screen or do you want to share my screen OK?
Yeah.
So as Bridget said, it's a joint venture of, of several UN agencies and some other other players like UK Mate Office and Green Climate Fund who have contributed this report.
And, and, and, and we are not going to meet climate targets and, and, and we are not going to meet the sustainable development goal targets either with the current base of action.
And this was a demonstration of what has happened to the emissions in various parts of the world a year ago and, and from 2022 to 23.
And you can see that there are, there's positive movement going on, for example, in European countries, but India, China and Russia, they have been increasing their emissions and, and, and from last year to this year, it seems that we're, we're going to be close to 0 in emission growth, whereas a year ago it was about 1% increase.
And as as I said, there's very **** likelihood that that we are, we are going to hit the the new record on in global temperatures.
And here you can see this all these sustainable development goals and all these coloured symbols indicate how various climatic parameters are affecting the implementation of of the sustainable development goals.
And you can see in a nutshell that that practically all of them are affected.
And, and we have of course impacts on food security.
We have impacts on, on, on water, we have impacts on, on ocean and, and, and this is shown in the report.
But I would just pick some, some cases to, to demonstrate.
And I already said that we have seen this almost 12,000 disasters, weather related disasters during the past 50 years.
And, and we have seen casualties especially in less developed countries and also economic losses in especially in less, less developed countries.
And, and, and with science and, and, and, and, and, and weather, climate and water services, we can, we can mitigate these, these risks and be better prepared.
And, and this is demonstrated in this, this craft and, and for example, this early warning services for all, which is our major 3.1 billion U.S.
dollars programme for the coming, coming five years.
We, our aim is to, is to modernise the meteorological services in all of our member countries so that we would have 100% coverage of proper services.
And, and that work has began and we are, we are investing in the improvement of the observing systems, early warnings, service skills and, and also how to deliver these, these forecasts to various customers and, and users.
And this is demonstrating this hunger problem.
You can see that Northern hemisphere mostly is, is green.
So we are not supposed to face problems in that sense exploding Ukraine, which is now with the red colour and also Mexico is with red colour.
And, and, but if if you look at the red coloured areas of the world, it's, it's South America and Africa and, and several countries in Southern Asia and, and Middle Middle East.
Even some rich Arabic countries may face that that problem like like Oman, for example.
And of course, Afghanistan is, is also a country which is in a fairly bad, bad shape from many perspectives.
And, and, and, and, and this, this water is also, of course, 1 sector through which the impacts of climate change are very much felt.
And, and, and it's very unlikely that we would meet this Sustainable Development Goal 6 targets due to the growing impacts of, of climate change and, and by having better monitoring and services related to water, we could, we could mitigate that, that challenge.
And, and then this, one of the sectors which is also affected is, is NHC and, and, and, and we are the national meteorological hydrological services are providing weather, climate and water services to optimise the use of energy system.
And, and globally we have a growing demand of energy.
And, and especially in less developed countries, the situation is, is, is most challenging.
And, and, and I already mentioned this, this impact on, on urban areas where these impacts of climate change, they, they, they have felt more than in, in rural areas and, and, and, and these forecasts and, and also equality monitoring and, and services are, are needed to mitigate those, those sentences.
We have a new way of monitoring global greenhouse gas sources and sinks and and our Congress in May approved the new ways where we are using ground based measurements, satellite data and models to estimate the what what's happening to the sources and sinks of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide.
And especially this by role of biosphere in as a source and sink of carbon dioxide is one of the areas where we have big uncertainties and we don't fully understand the sources of methane.
For example, last year we saw the biggest annual increase of methane concentration in the atmosphere.
And, and it's not fully understood and, and, and this is one of our initiatives for the forthcoming COP 28 to get approval for this globally next please.
And this I, I was just saying that we have a record heat in the ocean.
We have stored actually more than 90% of the excess heat there that we have produced to the planet, the ocean.
And, and this red, red curve here demonstrates that we have far exceeded the previous seas ocean surface temperatures for for of of the past past decades.
And, and, and this is thanks to El Nino in, in Pacific.
And also we have record heat in the, in the Atlantic Ocean, which is a new, new feature.
And, and this is having impacts on fisheries and, and marine ecosystems.
For example, coral reefs are sensitive to ocean temperatures.
Next, please.
And and finally, just to say that as a science and technical and service community, we are we are doing our at most that we would minimise the risks of, of, of growing impacts of, of climate, climate change.
Thank you very much, Professor Tallas.
And now I'm happy to open the floor to questions.
You can find here on screen the the link to this report and you will also have access you have received in the press release all the material press releases in all languages and social media elements.
Yes, please.
Thank you.
Nina Larsen with AFPI was wondering if you could say a little bit more about the impact of ongoing conflict on on the early warnings or lack of early warnings that have that have contributed to like you were mentioning the the catastrophe that we've seen in in Libya?
Do you think that that catastrophe could have been averted if, if they had been aware of what was coming?
And also are you expecting, would you expect to see other similar types of catastrophes in places you mentioned Sudan, but also Ukraine or other places where, where I guess the the early warning systems might not be working?
Thank you.
Yeah, actually we have several such countries where we where we have lack of good governance.
The the, the government is not active as, as, as it used to be before the the, the crisis.
And, and Libya has been in such a stage.
So for the past five years and, and, and, and, and, and we have had interaction with them and we have tried to help them, but but since the security situation in the country is so difficult, it's difficult to go there and improve the situation.
And, and, and the Metservice is practically not functioning because they are not they are not able to operate and they're observing network has been very much destroyed.
the IT systems have been destroyed.
And although Libya used to be a wealthy country with fairly modern services in the past, but due to this induction of the meteorological service, the, the, the, the flooding event just came there and, and there was no evacuation taking place because there was not the proper early warning services in in place.
And at the, at Sudan, they are facing the similar situation.
It's just discussed with the directors and all of the Sudanese met service last week in Nairobi.
And she said that most of the staff member have member members have escaped the country and, and there are some of them working from northeastern part of the country, but they are not able to run their business in a normal way.
And we have, we have similar situation in South Sudan.
Luckily, the, the, the, the situation is improving there and, and gradually we can start building their, their, their services.
And of course in Ukraine there are also limitations.
According to our information, about 1/3 of the weather stations have been destroyed and they are not able to operate their systems at 24/7 anymore.
They can, the estimation is that they all, they can only get access to about 20% of the data that they used to have before the, before the war.
And that's for sure having negative impact on the on the services and, and, and, and these services are also used for military purposes.
So that's that's also 11 dimension of those those those services.
So would you say, for instance, for Libya that that the catastrophe that we've seen, that we see there now, that that could have been averted, that we wouldn't have seen the loss of life that we're seeing now if there'd been advanced warning?
And also, is there anything that the international community can do to help improve early warning systems in these countries?
Thank you.
Yes, so, so that's, that's the conclusion that if they would have been a normally operating meteorological service, they could have issued the warnings and and and also the Emergency Management authorities would have been able to carry out evacuation of the of the people.
And we could have lost avoided most of the human, human casualties.
Of course we cannot the fully avoid economic losses, but but we could have also minimised those those losses by having proper services in in place.
Stefan Bisal atone newspaper I was wondering.
If.
We don't.
Cut.
Carbon emission for more drastically, if we don't take more drastic measures in terms of adaptation and mitigation, does it mean that we will never reach the SD GS?
And the second question is climate change actually the the most important factors that could prevent us from reaching the SD GS?
Thank you.
Climate sense is clearly one important component in this, this game.
Of course we have also this economic challenges which have been caused partly by this, this COVID crisis and war in Ukraine and, and, and inflation and, and, and, and, and, and, and those are hitting the less developed countries much more than than than than than wealthy countries like like the European countries.
But there's a growing component coming from climate change.
And in the long run, even the World Economic Forum in its recent report estimated that during the coming 10 years, the biggest risk for global economy is going to be failure in climate mitigation and #2 risk for the global economy is failure in climate adaptation and #3 is growing amount of disaster.
So, so these are these and those impacts are growing at the moment.
And we can all already see the impacts in, in this hunger crises.
So for example, that's, that's, that's fairly clear.
And and also this water sustainable development goal is is is is strongly affected by by by by growing impact of climate sense.
And the negative trend in weather patterns will anyhow continue until 2000 sixties.
There's no return back to last century's climate anymore.
And and and the glacier melting a sea level rise game.
We have already lost that that that may be a problem for the coming thousand thousands years because because of the already **** concentration of carbon dioxide.
So this it's a growing issue we have, we have just seen the first impacts, but these negative impacts are are gradually growing until 2000 and 60s.
If we are able to reach the Paris limits then we could mitigate the the worst things to happen.
But but until then, we will see see a growth of of of that that negative impact.
Chris evoked FP.
Sorry, I just wanted to have a clarification because on.
Tuesday we go to Word.
That the National Meteorological Services or centre emitted like 3 warnings over 72 hours in Libya.
So I was just wondering if then it just means that the authorities didn't listen.
Or that stuff.
Yeah, there's an overall challenge in the country that that the government is and, and the government authorities are not functioning normally and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and the inaction from the Emergency Management authorities was one of the one of the reasons we have seen such cases also in in rich countries there.
For example, in 2005 when Hurricane Katrina was hitting New Orleans, there were there were plenty of casualties since the the, the evacuation didn't take place.
And even in Germany two years ago, we had similar case and, and this is again 1111 similar case.
And also in Mozambique, when this cyclone Edai was hitting, hitting the country, the forecast was OK, but but there was no action.
So and, and, and in this early warning services for all, we are trying to improve the whole chain from from observations to forecasts and, and, and impact.
And, and, and that's why we are very much promoting this impact based forecasting so that we can wake up various players in the country, Emergency Management authorities, health related authorities, NNC, NNC companies and and so forth.
Thank you, Mohammed from Turkey's another news agency.
Exaggerated and unfunded comments about meteorological events have increased recently.
This situation caused also panic in international and national public.
Do you have a plan and and intention to combat this disinformation?
And we have also seen this situation in the latest flood in Libya.
Yeah.
What would you like to say about it?
If, if I would be the, the, the, the emperor of the universe, I would pass this message to decision makers and, and big companies and especially fossil companies.
And, and, and not to pass this message so strongly to the young people who are who at the moment panicking and, and we are not heading towards the end of the world.
We are not heading towards the end of mankind.
No biosphere.
But we are talking about different scales of grey for the future.
And if you're able to reach the, the, the, the Paris limits of 1.52°, then we could, we could say that we will have light grey views.
So that this light grey means that we will see anyhow negative, more morning negative impacts of climate change and today, but we could still live with those, those those challenges.
But if we if we fail with climate mitigation and if we head towards 2.8, which is that the moment the, the, the, the pathway where we are on, we would see dramatically more negative impacts on of, of climate change.
But thanks to these technological means and, and why the use of those technological means renewable NHC electric vehicles and, and also we can change our diet and, and we have growingly studied using those those means.
And so there's also some hope.
So we are not automatically going to be doomed, but but it's clear that we have to raise our level of ambition.
And I have been lucky to see for example, in many African countries, things are happening here in Europe.
We have been leading, leading these climate mitigation efforts.
But at the moment the main challenge is to, is to is to see action in this G20 countries and especially the BRICS part of of G2020 countries.
So far they haven't been able to make commitments that would keep us on this 1.5° that way.
Laurent Cyro Online.
Yeah, thank you for.
Taking my question.
Broader.
Question on the early warning, based on what you said on, on Libya to try to enlarge the scope.
So where, where do you stand now on that goal to get universal Early warning system by 2027 and how?
That kind of.
Disasters, the set of disasters that's we're seeing now might hamper that goal because I can assume that priorities will be put in reconstruction rather than than prevention, whereas maybe it should be.
So, yeah, yeah.
How can that hamper the the, the situation?
Thank you.
Thank you.
So, so we got the mandate from Secretary Senator Guterres 1 1/2 years to prepare an action plan so that we would have 100% coverage of early warning services.
Today, only half of our 193 members have proper early warning services in place.
And this action plan was presented to the last COP meeting 27 in Sarmers Sake and we got the strong support for that.
And we are lucky that many donor countries and donor development financing organisations have studied financing the work.
And we at the moment working in 30 countries.
We have together with Sekhar Sena Guterres chosen 30 countries, mostly in African countries and island states, but some some Latin American countries and South and Asian countries.
We are working and and we have already studied the first investments.
We are improving at the moment the observing systems in 60 two countries and and and and and.
Our aim is that gradually we would cover about 100 countries by the end of 2027.
And, and, and several donor countries have already allocated financing through our systematic observation financing facility trust fund and, and we have also climate risk and early warning service programme which has been going on for several years for, for that purpose.
And then we have been interacting with Green Climate Fund and, and, and, and, and they are going to allocate the quite extensive resources for, for this purpose.
So the, the, the, the perspective is fairly optimistic and then several countries have agreed that they will work on bilateral basis.
For example, 3 weeks ago when I was at the Pacific ministerial meeting, Australia, New Zealand announced that they are they're going to support further improvement of the services in Pacific region.
Japan is doing the same and, and also China has agreed that they will do work on bilateral basis.
So I'm quite optimistic that we will, we will be able to reach the goals and, and we have to improve the whole chain and also to make sure that the various authorities are acting, acting in a proper way.
And and that's, that's also one of the one of the challenges and, and establish a more, we are working like a family organisation where we of course, freely exchanging data.
It also the forecast data, but we also freely exchanging know how.
And our developed country members are very much supporting this work.
And we have also SS Corporation, for example, the strong, strong African countries are supporting some of their neighbour neighbouring countries with their with their know how.
Long, do you have a follow up question or is it another question?
Yeah, it's a follow up.
Thank you.
So all these countries that we mentioned in the discussion, Libya, Sudan, South Sudan and maybe also Ukraine, they're.
All part of the 30.
Countries that you're that you're supporting.
So we have special emphasis on on LDC countries and, and six countries and and and, and.
For example, South Sudan is one of the countries where we are acting.
And for for Libya and Ukraine type of countries.
There are also new new means, other means of support.
For example, European Union countries are very much interested in supporting the development in Ukraine.
But of course, we have to 1st see a stability of the of the situation in the country.
And, and same is true for for Libya, it's, it's difficult to act there at the moment.
And also in Sudan, Sudan was one of the countries which was chosen among these thirty countries.
But, but at the moment we have to wait until, until the situation is allows concrete, concrete action in the in the country.
But we are very much helping, helping all of those countries to improve their situation.
But of course, there has to be first stability of the of the military, military crisis.
Jamie Keaton.
Hi, thank you, Bridget.
For taking my question, Secretary.
General, I wanted to get your take on what you see.
Are the most important.
Stakes for the upcoming cop meeting, both in terms.
Of attenuation and adaptation.
If you could be as specific as possible, please.
Thank you.
Yeah, the overall goal is that we would see raise of the ambition level of mitigation and, and, and so far there's a, there's a plan that we would speed up the NHC transition to, to, to use more, more renewable NHC sources and, and, and, and cease the consumption of fossil fuels.
That's, that's, that's, that's number one.
And then there's a desire that we would pay growing attention to adaptation because because the impacts of climate sense will be felt during the coming decades anyhow growingly.
So we have to, we have to invest in that.
And that's very much the plea from less developed countries to, to allocate even half of the climate financing to adapt adaptation.
And of course, we have to make sure that these 100 billion a year financing for Green Climate Fund finally takes, takes place.
We have been lagging behind in that financing.
And that's very much the plea of, of less developed countries.
And that was very much the tone from from the climate summit last week in, in, in, in Nairobi that the, the, the, the richest countries have to fulfil their, their financing promises.
Maya Plants, yes, thank you very much for taking my question.
It is my appliance from the UN brief.
My question is regarding Secretary General, which donor countries are supporting funding for sensor systems, early warning systems and satellite systems?
Can you spend a little bit?
Also, how easier maybe now it is to convince donor countries that they have to to support this investment?
So, so we have this all existing tool financing mechanism, this software which is investments in observing systems and, and there we, we have seen the first players who have been financing it's, it's, it's European countries, especially not European countries, but widely European countries and, and also USA is, is nowadays financing it.
We'd just signed an agreement with Netherlands this week where they are, they are also quite going to allocate, for example, €55 million for for the early warning services programme.
And, and, and then we have this cruise programme, which is climate risk and early warning services.
And, and there we have which, which which was initiated by France.
And there we have at the moment about 10 donor countries we are which are financing that.
And then we have also climate adaptation financing mechanism.
The global Adaptation fund is financing those activities.
And also from North Europe, we have this Nordic Development Fund which is financing.
Those those activities and then several countries are doing the work on bilateral bases and, and for example, Australia just announced some weeks ago in at the Pacific Ministeria that they are allocating 25,000,000, sorry 30 million Australian dollars, which is about 20 million U.S.
dollars for, for the Pacific called Weather Ready Pacific Programme.
And with the Green Climate Fund we are, we are discussing quite extensive financing sums and the aim is that we would mobilise all together 3.11 billion U.S.
dollars by the end of 27.
And, and, and that's about half of that is devoted to meteorological infrastructures and, and service.
And the other half is devoted to preparedness and action from the authority side where we have partners UNDRRITU and Red Cross Red Croissant.
It's are taking place of, they're taking care of, of the rest of this, this programme.
So it's, it's a wider joint programme.
So there's, there's going to be, we already have some money in our pockets so that we can, we, we have began the work and and of course we have to make sure that this financing is flowing during the coming years as well.
Thank you very much.
If there are no more questions, I don't.
Yeah, there is one more question.
Maya, do you have a follow up question or did you keep your hand raised?
Yes, I do have a follow up question is regarding early warning systems in the Amazon rainforest.
How are are is WMO working on on that aspect?
And also, if you could briefly please, Secretary General, make a comment.
Regarding SS Corporation good.
So in the Amazonia region, we have some donor countries which are for example, Switzerland is supporting work in the Andean, Andean countries and and also also my home country Finland has been has been supporting 4 countries in that that region.
And concerning Brazil, we have been helping them to improve their observing networks, but they have their own own financing for that that purpose.
So mostly we are supporting less developed countries and, and, and, and, and, and of course the middle income and the wealthy countries have their own own financing means and they can also use for example, World Bank and Regional Development Bank financing mechanism for, for their for their work.
And SS cooperation is also something that we are very much promoting.
And, and for example, in Africa, we have a strong players like like Nigeria.
Nigeria has been supporting several of, of the of the West African countries with their expertise and, and resources.
We have also good expertise in Morocco and Kenya and, and South Africa and, and, and they also playing a role in in the, in the regions as as W more, we are very much promoting sub regional cooperation and, and, and, and that makes really makes makes sense.
And, and then I don't know how do you, how do you see the, how do you classify China?
But China is also also supporting several less developed countries.
And somebody was asking about satellite data.
We have a free data policy at WMO.
So these basic observations coming from ground based stations, from balloon soundings, vessels, aircraft and also from satellites that's freely exchange.
We've just approved our new data policy two years ago and where we updated which data should be freely released for for global use.
And that's happening.
And we have also 13 mobile forecasting centres and, and they have agreed that all of their products are made to freely available.
So especially in less developed countries, it doesn't make sense to have their own supercomputers and calculate the the forecast models, but they can, they can build their capacities around all re existing data which is released from from those centres.
We have those in European countries, not American countries, Australia, Japan, China typically and and that's made freely available for for all of our members.
Thank you very much.
Now I think there is a normal question, so this press conference is coming to an end.
If you have any additional questions or interview requests, Claire Neilis is sitting in the room.
You can add to her.
And we have with us also Lauren Stewart, who is the coordinator of this report and she's also available for any question on the United in Science report.
Thank you very much A Banfon Matineitos.