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Filipe Jacinto Nyusi, the president of Mozambique, has unveiled an ambitious national roadmap to achieve Early Warnings for All by the end of 2027.
President Nyusi also announced a significant new investment to improve basic weather and climate observations that underpin early warnings. These announcements were made at a ministerial-level meeting in the country’s capital, Maputo.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres first talked about such a plan, also known as ‘EW4All’, in March 2022, with the objective of achieving universal coverage within five years.
Mozambique has already made significant achievements in climate adaptation, according to World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Secretary-General Celeste Saulo.
The plan was officially launched in Mozambique at a national workshop in November 2023 and is being implemented with the support of the National Institute for Disaster Management and the National Institute of Meteorology, in close collaboration with the National Communication Institute, the Mozambican Red Cross, and the UN Resident Coordinator’s office.
The EW4All Roadmap establishes an overarching framework for a cohesive and unified multi-hazard, early warning system programme that can possibly be integrated into Mozambique’s five-year development strategy.
It aims to cover the entire meteorological value chain, from gathering weather and climate observation data to better predictions, stronger early warning systems, and more informed climate adaptation plans.
The National Institute of Meteorology in Mozambique has funded its observation network through government finances and international development projects. But limited resources have hampered network access and maintenance.
According to WMO, the stations previously supported by efforts such as the Pilot Programme for Climate Resilience, the Nordic Development Fund, and the World Bank, were not maintained due to limited resources.
The World Bank has also highlighted the financial concerns in the 2023 Country Climate And Development Report and emphasised the need to involve the private sector in enhancing the Early Warning System for the transmission of timely meteorological and hydrological information.
Mozambique also lacks surface weather stations that meet the obligatory international WMO standard, the Global Basic Observing Network (GBON).
The southeast African country lost 75 per cent of its monitoring stations following flooding in 2000 and has been working to rebuild since then, stated Saulo in a video statement at the high-level ministerial event.
But Mozambique is among the first countries to enter the Systematic Observations Financing Facility (SOFF) investment phase. The $7.8 million investment from the SOFF is expected to improve the situation. This will help by installing six new land surface stations, upgrading 15 existing ones, and establishing four upper-air stations, she stated.
The funding under SOFF, will help to develop the government’s ambitious ‘One District, One Weather Station’ programme.
“New or updated surface and upper-air stations and technical assistance will improve national meteorological and hydrological services, thereby enhancing forecasting and early warning systems that save lives and livelihoods,” she told the audience.
This is a significant development for Mozambique, one of the most vulnerable countries to climate disasters and ranks 154 out of 185 countries in the ND-GAIN Country Index 2021, led by Notre Dame Global Adaptation Initiative.
Mozambique scored just 38.5 (out of 100) in the index that measures a country’s exposure, sensitivity and capacity to adapt to the negative effects of climate change.
Located on Africa’s Indian Ocean coast between South Africa and Tanzania, Mozambique is periodically pounded by tropical storms that sweep over the ocean, resulting in coastal and inland floods. Over 60 per cent of the population lives in low-lying coastal areas that rely largely on rain-fed agriculture, which raises the risk to infrastructure and livelihoods
Climate change has further exacerbated these issues, as has environmental degradation caused by human activities and bad land management
“Mozambique is a country that lives under permanent threat of disasters, especially those caused by extreme natural phenomena, with floods, cyclones and droughts being the most frequent. When these adverse events occur, they leave a trail of destruction characterised by human loss and material and environmental damage or serious implications for society and our economy,” said Nyusi, who is an African Union Champion on Disaster Risk Management.