Launch of the 2020 State of Climate Services Report

Launch of the 2020 State of Climate Services Report

Opening Remarks by Dr. QU Dongyu, Director-General, FAO

13 October (Tuesday) 2020, 15:00 Rome Time

As prepared

 

 

Distinguished Delegates,

Ladies and gentlemen,

1. I congratulate the World Meteorological Organization and all contributors to the 2020 State of Climate Services Report for this timely message on the gaps and opportunities to establish effective risk information and early warning systems, especially during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

2. Launching this important Report on the International Day for Disaster Risk Reduction underlines the importance of strengthening disaster risk governance.

3. The COVID-19 pandemic has increased the vulnerabilities of the most at-risk communities to climate shocks and natural hazards, including farmers, pastoralists, fishers and foresters. The same people who could benefit most from early risk information to help save lives and livelihoods. 

4. We know that many countries lack early warning systems and capacities. 

5. FAO estimated that between 2006 and 2016, agriculture in developing countries accounted for 23 percent of all damages and losses caused by natural disasters. At the same time, only 3 percent of the total agriculture-related Official Development Assistance was allocated to disaster prevention and preparedness. 

6. Investments in disaster prevention and preparedness in agriculture and food sectors remain acutely low. 

7. I used to be the Vice Governor and leading coordinator responsible for agricultural, meteorological and disaster-prevention affairs in Ningxia Province of China there have so frequent natural disasters. I fully understand the importance of early warning systems to the agricultural sector and rural livelihoods. 

8. A strong institutional collaboration between Hydro-meteorological Services and agricultural research or extension centres to provide timely agro-meteorological advisories at national and local level is a key to success. 

9. Pre-emptive action underpinned by effective weather data, early warning systems and disaster risk assessments, can save millions of livelihoods in times of conflict and natural disaster. 

10. “Early warning, Early actions” is therefore a key guiding principle for my administration in FAO to deal with potential risks for the global agri-food system, even before the latest outbreak of locust and the COVID-19 Pandemic. 

11. FAO, together with our core partners is testing, enhancing and upscaling anticipatory action.

12. And our collaboration on the ground is making a difference. 

13. In Bangladesh, our joint work to anticipate the impacts of floods this July led to the fastest allocation in history by the UN Central Emergency Response Fund – within four hours, delivery agencies were authorized to spend money, significantly mitigating damage.

14. In East Africa, the Desert Locust Information Service continues to play a crucial role in providing early warning against the ongoing locust outbreak. Control and surveillance operations triggered by the Service led to savings of 1.7 million tonnes of cereal across 10 countries – enough to feed 11.4 million people for one year, prevented more than US$ 512 million in damages; and spared over 350,000 pastoral households from livelihood loss and distress.

15. We need the right warning systems, real-time information and smart data to for positive prevention and preparedness, not only to face future shocks, but also to ensure that evidence-based decisions are made in rural and agricultural development.

16. A crucial opportunity for collaboration between our two organizations comes through the FAO Hand-in-Hand Initiative.

17. The FAO Hand-in-Hand Initiative already incorporates in the geospatial platform over 1 million geospatial layers, thousands of statistics series with 4,000 metadata records at the global and regional level covering (amongst many others) climate, soil, land and water information.

18. The Hand-in-Hand Initiative already employs sector specific climate indicators like water productivity, precipitation anomalies, agriculture stress and advanced crop calendars, many of them developed jointly by FAO, WMO and global experts. 

19. The FAO Digital Services Portfolio includes Crop Calendars for more than 130 crops, located in 283 agro-ecological zones of 44 countries. 

20. The FAO Data Lab offers recommendations on planting and harvesting during the COVID-19 outbreak using crop calendars.

21. And the Information Network on Post-harvest Operations (INPHO) provides information and advice to reduce food loss and produce more nutritious food, while mitigating the effects of climate change.

22. Digital climate services, using geospatial data, can increase the resilience of family farmers by providing them with near real time information, advise, micro credit and index-based insurance schemes.

23. And FAO is using its predictive capacity with support from WMO on climate variability to better predict and prevent plant pests from spreading, like Locust and Fall Army worm, using remote sensing and mobile technologies.

24. Recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic is an opportunity to build more sustainable and resilient systems through focused investment, smarter data and filling the early warning gap.

25. FAO looks forward to scaling up collaboration with the WMO and other partners to help rural communities worldwide be ready to react against natural hazards and shocks. 

26. Let’s turn early warning into early action and tap into the power of big data, to achieve better production, better nutrition, better environment and a better life.

Thank you