Nineteenth World Meteorological Congress and the High-Level Dialogue on Early Warnings for All (EW4ALL)
Opening Remarks
Secretary-General Doreen Bogdan-Martin
22 May 2023
Mr. Secretary-General,
Excellencies, and Ladies and Gentlemen,
It's an honor to address the WMO Congress and this High-Level Dialogue to accelerate the implementation of Early Warnings for All at the country level.
The all-too-familiar images of loss and destruction out of Myanmar after Cyclone Mocha and the floods in northern Italy in just the last few days are another reminder that early warnings can mean the difference between life and death.
That's why we're all here today. That's why ITU is proud to lead Pillar 3 on 'Warning Dissemination and Communication' together with IFRC, WMO, UNDP, IOM and REAP.
Our focus is on last-mile connectivity, to ensure warnings reach those at risk in time to take action.
We promote a multi-channel and people-centred approach that addresses the diversity of communities at risk and sends alerts over the radio, television, social media, sirens, and mobile phones, to name a few.
The Common Alerting Protocol ensures that alerts disseminated across multiple channels are consistent, and we use existing community-based infrastructures and locally led feedback mechanisms, so that messages are understandable and actionable.
At a time when close to 3 out of 4 people own a mobile phone, mobile early warning systems will be critical in meeting the initiative's ambitious goal.
Advances in new, emerging, alerting services via satellite systems also offer new possibilities.
We look forward to mobilizing ITU's unique public and private membership to explore and build on existing innovative solutions to bridge the last mile, including by leveraging AI to scale the effectiveness of early warning systems.
This will be at the core of the 'Green Digital Action Track' organized by ITU and partners during the upcoming COP28.
Dear colleagues,
The issues we discuss today are too big for any one player to face alone.
We look forward to working with the other pillar leads WMO, UNDRR and IFRC, to gain a comprehensive understanding of ongoing initiatives of the early warning system value chain, identify gaps, push stakeholder engagement and coordination, drive joint resource mobilization, and private sector engagement.
We just have a few years to succeed.
As UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed told university students just yesterday: We cannot avert climate change without reducing inequalities and investing in digital technology.
Let's remember that just one-third of the population in Least Developed Countries is online, and that less than half of the LDCs – and only one-third of Small Island Developing States – have reported existence of multi-hazard early warning systems.
So, let's reduce inequalities and invest in digital technology… and let's cover the whole world with an early warning system by the end of 2027.
We can do this!
Thank you.
