Lake Geneva

Complete coverage of the WCC-3 by GenevaLunch

Conference is 31 August – 4 September 2009

Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Geneva is home this week to a key global conference on how the world can adapt to climate change – disasters such as floods and hurricanes, but also the more subtle changes that affect agriculture, tourism and daily life.

The conference agenda is wide-ranging and includes improvements to early warning systems  for disasters and how to provide more precise and more localized weather forecasting, needed by developing countries as well as industries in the developed world.

The meeting is hosted by Switzerland and organized by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and a group of partners.

Climate change: mitigating the impact of humans, but also learning to adapt

“Mitigation” or reducing our impact on the world’s climate and global warming in particular, is a buzz word in discussions about climate change, but the other buzz term is “adapting”: how we can improve our knowledge and understanding of global climate change and better live with it.

Mitigation will be the focus when the world’s governments meet in Copenhagen, Denmark in December 2009 to hammer out a new agreement to replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on gas emissions, but the key meeting on how the world can adapt takes place now in Geneva, with the Swiss city as home 31 August to 4 September to the world’s third major conference on climate change in 30 years.

The first two were in 1979 and 1990.

Swiss Alps

The WCC-3’s mandate is to create a Global Framework for Climate Services, to improve climate adaptation. It is seen as a necessary complement to the Copenhagen talks in December. The political climate at the Geneva meeting, in particular the willingness to work together at a ministerial level, could set the stage for Copenhagen.

“WCC-3 has a transformational ability – enabling society to take full advantage of climate science and meteorological and hydrological information for building green and sustainable socio-economic progress,” says Michel Jarraud, WMO secretary-general.

Weather experts and gov’t leaders meet in Geneva

The meeting brings together more than 20 heads of state and at least 80 top-level ministers from many of the 150 countries participating, who will meet with some 1,500 policy-makers and the weather-related scientific community. The WMO is a UN organization whose members are the world’s national weather services, with responsibility for studying, researching and measuring weather phenomena. They are the primary source of information for the public about weather in most countries. The scientific experts come from several fields, notably meteorology and hydrology.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon addresses the conference Wednesday 2 September. Rajendra Kumar Pachauri, chairman of the WMO co-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and co-winner of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, will give a keynote address 3 September.

Lake Geneva

Several countries are sponsoring the conference, with Switzerland as host country leading the way with a CHF1.8 million ($1.7) contribution. China and the US often receive attention as potential largest polluter and current largest, in terms of CO2 emissions, but they also have enormous adjustment problems: both are bringing large delegations to Geneva, reflecting their recent efforts to put climate change higher on their political agendas.

The Global Framework for Climate Services

The framework for climate services is designed to use a growing body of scientific and population information to create practical steps and products to provide accurate and timely climate information and predictions. There are four key components, which have been developed in pre-conference sessions:

• a renewed commitment to climate observations and the free and open availability of data
• a strengthened focus on climate modelling and prediction research
• a new Climate Services Information System
• and a new Climate Services Application Programme.

The WMO says these components are designed to

“build capacity in developing countries and to support the application of climate services for climate resilient development. The major goal is to develop an effective interface between the providers and users of climate services. Such climate services will provide decision-makers in key socio-economic sectors – water, agriculture, fisheries, health, forestry, transport, tourism, energy, disaster risk management – with the information they need to make decisions in the face of climate variability and change.”

The public needs more than weather bulletins as we know them

Conference participants have agreed that the public needs more than current weather bulletins to make informed decisions. Agriculture, tourism, forestry and the energy industry are just some of the economic groups who need more precise and more localized information.

“Now, there is an urgent need for a major injection of resources into existing international climate programmes and the application of climate predictions and information through the national research and service communities,” says John Zillman, chair of the WCC-3 international organizing committee.  “As a mechanism to help that happen, WCC-3 is a decade overdue.”

Several artnerships have been established, such as the recent collaboration between the WMO and the UNDP (United Nations Development Programme) to reduce disaster risk in southeast Europe and the multi-partner Climate for Development in Africa programme. Many more are needed, says the WMO, particularly in developing countries, which often have woefully inadequate weather information.

Editor’s note: GenevaLunch will be covering the conference extensively this week. We are also highlighting climate change and weather resources on our Resources page and we are listing several events linked to the conference, which are open to the public, on our Events page.

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