The World Bank says an investment of over two billion dollars is required to fully develop and modernise Africa’s hydromet services.
World Bank Senior Director, Ede Jorge Ijjasz-Vasquez said more partners are required to upscale the resource envelop from the initial US $600 million that the bank committed last year.
“Without strong hydromet services, Africa’s developmental gains will be in jeopardy as millions of people could fall back into poverty reversing economic gains that Africa has made over the past years,” Ijjasz-Vasquez told delegates at a side event during the on-going COP 22 in Marrakech, Morocco.
While thanking new partners such as the United Nations Development Programme, World Food Programme and Agence Francaise Development,Ijjasz-Vasquez urged for more partnerships adding that “two billion dollars plus is required to improve hydromet services in Africa.”
At COP 21, the World Bank in partnership with the African Development Bank (AfDB) and the World Meteorological Organization announced a US $600 million programme to improve hydro-meteorological services in 15 West African countries.
The programme, Strengthening Climate Change and Disaster Resilience in Sub-Saharan Africa, aims at improving meteorological services through infrastructure and capacity building in latest meteorological technologies for a reliable and timely capture and transmission of meteorological information to the public.
And speaking earlier, Africa Development Bank (AfDB) Coordinator for Clim-Dev Special Fund, Justus Kabyemera said it was sad that Africa is losing colossal sums of money to cope with disasters that could be avoided if strong hydromet services were in place.
“Many of you will recall the recent drought in Southern Africa. Its impact has been catastrophic, affecting food security, livelihoods and entire economies and causing serious disruption to the regional development agenda,” said Kabyemera adding that an estimated 32 million people will be food insecure between June 2016 and March 2017 including 18.6 million people who will require humanitarian assistance, with an estimated cost of US $ 1.2 billion to respond.
The major weakness noted in Africa lies mainly in the national and regional Hydromet systems, which lacks capacity to collect and deliver timely prior information or alerts that could assist preparedness and contingency planning to address negative impacts.
It is for this reason that through the Hydromet programme, the World Meteorological Organisation has prioritised the development of national strategies on hydromet and link them to National Adaptation Plans (NAPs).
“As a major step to mainstream climate information services, WMO is working to help facilitate the development of national strategies on hydromet and this will be linked to the bigger adaptation picture—the National Adaptation Processes (NAPs),” said Elena Manaenkova, Deputy Secretary General of the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO).
And in shading some light on the gravity of in-country challenges, Zambian Minister of Water Development, Sanitation and Environmental Protection Lloyd Mulenga Kaziya lamented the dwindling climate information services and called for urgent support from cooperating partners to address the information gap especially for the rural poor.
“Zambia is deeply affected, in the past five years, our rivers have been drying up while the frequency of droughts has increased affecting our smallholder farmers in terms of production, and to make matters worse, information flow to the affected communities is not readily available,” said Kaziya adding that the southern African country requires urgent support to upgrade hydromet systems and integrate them in all key sectors such as Mining, Energy and Agriculture.
COP 22 has been dubbed the implementation conference and the African Group of Negotiators (AGN) is not leaving anything to chance. It has been pushing for the adaptation agenda to ensure that the continent benefits through an increased allocation of resources to adaptation and not mitigation.
Under the auspices of the African Ministerial Conference on Environment (AMCEN), the African Adaptation Initiative was launched at COP 21, with the aim of coordinating the continent’s adaptation activities including at the UNFCCC negotiating table.
“The hydromet programme comes at an opportune time when there is political capital as expressed by our leaders at the highest level, and it is important to advantage of this political will by coordinating hydromet and the Africa Adaptation Initiative to avoid duplication of activities,” said Kulthoum Omari, Chair, AGN, Africa Adaptation Initiative.
Hydromet services are key to strengthening resilience to climate change by providing early warning services especially for rural poor whose livelihoods are largely dependent on natural resource based activities such as agriculture.
