Ahmed Mourad (Cairo)
Regional and international organizations concerned with the environment and climate are pinning great hopes on the “COP 28” summit, which will be hosted by the UAE at the end of this year, to push efforts to establish early warning systems against climate disasters to contribute to reducing the losses resulting from it.
The United Nations had earlier launched an initiative to establish an early warning mechanism to protect the Earth’s population from climate change disasters by 2027, and the international initiative came after a series of climate disasters that struck many countries of the world recently, and during the past years.
The early warning mechanism is one of the measures to adapt to climate change through the use of integrated communication systems to help communities prepare for climate-related disasters, and helps to evacuate residents of disaster-prone areas to safe areas before the disaster strikes, which reduces the loss of life and property by 30-40%. .
Dr. Samir Tantawi, director of the United Nations Climate Change Project and Egyptian member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, explained that the COP28 summit represents a strong impetus for international efforts aimed at establishing an early warning mechanism that protects the Earth’s population from natural disasters resulting from climate changes, such as Hurricanes, floods, droughts, and others that result in great loss of life and resources.
The initiative to establish early warning systems appeared for the first time in 2015 during the United Nations Conference on Climate Change in Paris, and the Paris Agreement called on the member states of the United Nations to ratify the initiative.
During the climate summits in Glasgow 2021 and Sharm el-Sheikh 2022, the United Nations reiterated its call for endorsing the “early warning” initiative, and assigned an international organization to work on establishing systems and disseminating the experience in various regions of the world.
Tantawi stated in a statement to Al-Ittihad that the UAE will work through “Cop 28” to complete and build on the efforts made by Egypt in “Cop 27”. people and reduce the losses of climate disasters.
The Secretary-General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, had considered the Sharm el-Sheikh climate summit “COP 27” a good starting platform for launching the early warning mechanism, stressing that at the “Cop 28” summit in the UAE, what has been implemented in this regard will be reviewed, and any practical obstacles in front of it will be overcome. Run the new mechanism.
Tantawi pointed out that “COP 28” will witness the holding of the first round of the review process of what has been achieved in climate issues since the Paris Agreement of 2015 until now, and an assessment of the efforts and measures implemented by countries, pointing out the need for everyone to know which countries have made progress in protecting the climate. Earth, which insists on harming the planet.
According to the reports of the United Nations Office for Environmental Disaster Reduction, nearly half of the Earth’s population is threatened with environmental damage resulting from climate change, hence the need to expedite the implementation of the early warning mechanism to protect millions of people around the world from climate disasters.
The international expert pointed out that the World Meteorological Organization was assigned to work on establishing an early warning mechanism covering the largest possible area of the planet, in coordination with meteorological bodies located in various countries of the world, research centers and international institutions working in the fields of monitoring, reporting, monitoring and measurement of climate and meteorology. weather and climatic disturbances, so that efforts are unified and coordinated in order to reach a unified network of early warning systems.
The early warning mechanism is scheduled to include hundreds of thousands of coastal monitoring stations that monitor and measure wave heights, speed, wind directions and the resulting environmental impact.
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