Secretary-General, in World Meteorological Day Message, Stresses Early Climate Warning Systems ‘Not Luxuries’, but Sound, Life-Saving Investments with Almost 10-Fold Return

Following is UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ message for World Meteorological Day, observed on 23 March:

The dark predictions of meteorologists are coming to pass.  Our climate is going up in flames.  Every one of the last 10 years has been the hottest in recorded history.  Ocean heat is breaking records.  And every country is feeling the effects — whether scorched by fires, swept by floods, or pummelled by unprecedented storms.

The theme of this year’s World Meteorological Day — Closing the Early Warning Gap Together — reminds us that, in this new climate reality, early warning systems are not luxuries.  They are necessities and sound investments — providing an almost 10-fold return.  Yet, almost half the world’s countries still lack access to these life-saving systems.  It is disgraceful that, in a digital age, lives and livelihoods are being lost because people have no access to effective early warning systems.

The United Nations Early Warnings for All initiative aims for everyone, everywhere to be protected by an alert system by 2027.  The world must come together, and urgently scale up action and investment, to realize this goal.

We need high-level political support for the initiative within countries, a boost in technology support, greater collaboration between governments, businesses and communities, and a major effort to scale up finance.  Increasing the lending capacity of the multilateral development banks is key.  The Pact for the Future agreed last year made important strides forward, it must be delivered in full.  So must the COP29 [twenty-ninth Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change] finance outcome.

At the same time, we must intensify our efforts to tackle the climate crisis at source — through rapid and deep cuts to greenhouse-gas emissions — to prevent it getting unimaginably worse.  This year all countries must honour the promise to deliver new national climate action plans that align with limiting global temperature rise to 1.5°C.

In an era of climate disaster, every person on Earth must be protected by an early warning system as a matter of justice.  Together, let’s deliver.