UN proposes global system to provide new ‘climate services’ for developing nations

<p>GENEVA – The global economy could reduce $100 billion a year in climate change-linked losses by providing the most vulnerable countries with “climate services” to help them prepare, a United Nations expert panel recommended Thursday.</p> <p>The panel proposed creating a $75 million-a-year U.N.-administered agency, or program, to help developing nations deal with an increasing onslaught of tropical cyclones, storm surges, floods and droughts.</p> <p>The World Meteorological Organization – the U.N.’s weather agency – said most of the funding would come through development aid, and then be handed out for specific projects in the most vulnerable nations.</p> <p>It said in a statement that more surveillance and early warning information is needed because about 90 per cent of disasters in recent decades were caused by weather or climate-related hazards. It said the findings were based on concerns raised at a 2009 world climate conference</p> <p>We want to make “the best possible information available to decision-makers,” organization director Michel Jarraud said.</p> <p>The WMO said that the hazards currently lead to economic losses of $100 billion per year, “are rising, and can inhibit the pace of development by years if not decades.”</p> <p>The panel was co-chaired by former U.N. humanitarian chief Jan Egeland, who now heads the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, and former Egyptian water minister Mahmoud Abu Zeid.</p> <p>Egeland said better flood monitoring and other early warning climate-service systems would produce “great benefits in terms of reduced disaster risks, increased food security, improved health and more effective adaptation to climate change.”</p>