Common Roadmap for scaling up weather, water and climate services delivery in Africa
1 June 2017
The emerging work area broadly labeled as “weather, water and climate services” is gaining momentum as a critical instrument for informing adaptation efforts in Africa, which has been flagged by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as one of the most vulnerable in the world to the impacts of a changing climate.
Over 70 participants representing 34 organizations and 22 countries across the four corners of Africa and the world, came together in Saly, Senegal from 1 to 2 May 2017, to discuss the critical need for a coordinated effort in scaling up weather, water and climate services delivery in the region of Africa. The meeting was convened by the Global Framework for Climate Services (GFCS) and jointly organised by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the World Bank, the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA/African Climate Policy Center) and the African Development Bank (AfDB).
For climate information to translate into societal value and contribute to saving lives and assets under a changing climate in the region of Africa, a larger value chain enabling multi-stakeholder and multi-disciplinary collaboration is needed to link knowledge on weather and climate to action (i.e., from climate data providers to final users, and back). The Saly meeting opened a key opportunity for participants to reflect on what actions were urgently needed to achieve improved coordination of the multitude of projects and investments on hydromet services in Africa. In a mapping exercise, all ongoing, past and future climate service projects and initiatives were visualised. This resulted in a sense of how and where the investments are being made and which stakeholders are not being effectively engaged.
Institutions at all levels pledged commitment to a Common Roadmap for scaling up weather, water and climate services delivery in Africa. The success of the workshop was a very strong indicator that there is a real desire for an effort towards achieving better coordination and effectiveness of climate services across Africa in order to meaningfully support adaptive resilience in a changing climate. Only through such enhanced coordination can the true societal value of climate science be obtained, and climate knowledge be meaningfully linked with action for resilience in Africa that can have an impact for vulnerable communities and policy-makers alike.
More information
This post is a summary from the "Pledging commitment to a common roadmap for scaling up weather, water and climate services delivery in Africa" news item on the GFCS (Global Framework for Climate Services) website, written by Arame Tall & Fatema Rajabali. Press here to read the full news item.
Within the AfriAlliance project, the Work Package dedicated to "Improving Monitoring and Forecasting of Water and Climate Challenges", led by ITC UT, is currently looking on how to build on the work described above with its own analysis of barriers and constraints for monitoring and forecasting efforts.