Rwanda is among the East African countries that will benefit from $7 million in funding to finance a regional initiative to boost hydro-meteorological and early warning service. Also to benefit are Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda. The project was unveiled on June 12 during an event to discuss initiatives for strengthening hydro-meteorological and early warning services in the region, held at Kigali Serena Hotel.
The Climate Risk and Early Warning Systems (CREWS) initiative has approved financing to help scale up action for strengthening early warning systems, making it a key foundational financing mechanism.
UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, launched the initiative in November 2022 at the 27th Climate Change Conference (COP27) in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt.
In March 2022, Guterres committed the United Nations to lead the charge for the implementation of early warning systems for everyone in the world by 2027.
The UN Secretary-General has urged for heightened targeted investments of $ 3.1 billion from 2023 to 2027 in light of climate-related disasters causing greater displacement than armed conflicts.
This financing mechanism seeks to provide extra financial assistance to the least developed countries and Small Island Developing States (SIDS) especially susceptible to the results of severe weather and climate disturbances, so as to minimise vulnerability and bolster resilience and adaptive capacity.
The provision of funding is timely, given that Rwanda has experienced increasingly severe weather and climate extreme events in recent years.
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Devastating climate weather extremes caused flooding and landslides in May this year, resulting in the death of 135 people and rendering more than 20,000 homeless across the Western, Northern, and Southern provinces.
Aimable Gahigi, the Director-General of the Rwanda Meteorology Agency, asserted that the initiative will bolster the capabilities of countries and regional organisations to provide context-specific, impact-oriented weather forecasts and warnings tailored to the national and local levels while facilitating the rapid implementation of precautionary and anticipatory actions.
"Every day at 11:00 am, we virtually meet as experts from East African countries to assess the weather for prediction. There is still a gap in the early warning system. The new project we have launched will help bridge the early warning gap," Gahigi said.
Institutions involved in emergency management that utilise weather data will be involved in determining the challenges that remain which impede an effective early warning system, he added.
Gahigi stated that countries will possess the data and resources needed to generate accurate forecasts and warnings that will, in turn, enable impact-based preparedness, adding that the project will enable people and communities to take prompt action.
He noted that the new project would also facilitate the development of other projects to be implemented within a three- to five-year timeframe.
Officials said that scaled-up financing through facilitated access to the Green Climate Fund (GCF) is also expected.
