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Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The Swiss government will be pushing to strengthen Geneva’s role as the global centre for climate information when it participates in the Third World Climate Conference in Geneva 31 August to 4 September 2009. The conference will establish a system to improve the availability of climate information and predictions for government, the private sector, aid and other organizations.

Switzerland “considers climate information to be a key tool to strengthen society, particularly in developing countries, against the socio-economic consequences of climate change. Switzerland’s medium-term aim is to see the creation of the Global Framework for Climate Services and its embedding at the WMO (World Meteorological Organization). This would also serve to strengthen Geneva as a location for the coordination of future efforts in the dissemination of climate information,” Bern notes in a press release 25 June.

The conference is organized jointly by Switzerland and the World Meteorological Organization in Geneva and will bring together climate experts and “high-ranking government representatives to build a bridge between climate information providers and policymakers,” according to Bern.

The first conference, in 1979, resulted in the creation of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a leading scientific and technical body for the assessment of climate change. The second session of the WCC in 1990 set out the principles of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, which was discussed at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 and entered into force in 1994.