Menu
The Water at the Heart of Climate Action, is a upcoming project for systematic change that aims to accelerate and scale up water action to mitigate the impacts of water related risks and increase the climate resilience of affected communities.
Timeline: August 2023- August 2028
Budget: 55 Million Euros in total
Donor: Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA), Kingdom of Netherlands
This initiative of five years brings together three international organizations with a global mandate on the technical areas:
• International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC)
• United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR)
• World Meteorological Organization (WMO)
These organizations are already working together under the umbrella of the Centre of Excellence for Climate and Disaster Resilience. They will be further strengthened by a dedicated UN multi-partner financing mechanism to fund weather and climate surface-based observations: the Systematic Observations Financing Facility (SOFF). These partners are uniquely positioned to deliver targeted results in local-level policy and products.
The partners involved in the initiative agreed to focus efforts on Africa, and, where possible, to select countries within the same river basin, as integrated water management and early warning early action approaches do not always follow political boundaries. They will deliver climate and hydrological products and services to support national and local disaster management actors. They share a common goal to ultimately reduce water risk and increase resilience in the most vulnerable communities. By unlocking barriers across the whole hydro-meteorological (Hydro-Met) value chain (referred to as “from satellites to sandbags”), this partnership will model a way of working that can ideally be scaled and replicated. The approach puts country teams in the lead and will be piloted in four countries around the Nile River Basin (Ethiopia, Sudan, South Sudan, Uganda).
This initiative contributes to the “Early Warnings for All Initiative” (EW4All) based on the UN Secretary General’s challenge to provide early warnings for all by the end of 2027 and will be part of the commitments of the Netherlands Government for the Global Water Action Agenda presented the UN 2023 Water Conference.
This project will build synergies with other WMO projects in the region such as
WMO coordinates and supports the design, delivery and capacity development related to hydro-meteorological services in member states. They provide the entry point to the improvement and scale up of data and modelling services needed to provide actionable information products to decision makers.
