CRI听力: Meteorological Information Service To be Strengthened for Africa's Climate Change Mitigation

The First Conference of Ministers Responsible for Meteorology in Africa kicked off on Thursday in Nairobi, Kenya. The hundreds of delegates from nearly 50 African nations have agreed that they need to increase their ability to better forecast changes in the weather if they're going to help their respective governments create policy to deal with climate change.

CRI's Nairobi correspondent Wei Tong has more.

Michel Jarraud, Secretary-General of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has warned at the conference that the African continent is particularly at risk from climate change, noting the number and scale of natural disasters on the continent is rising.

"The ability of countries to mitigate the climate change effects is largely dependent on the mechanism that have been put in place to address the likely impact of climate change. And it is for this reason that the climate change has become an important political, economic and social issue worldwide."

One recent assessment of a number of African countries has shown that their weather prediction equiptment is so poor that the information they're coming up with isn't accurate.

As such, Joseph Mukabana, Director of Kenya's Meteorological Services suggests African governments have to show more support for their respective weather forecasting services.

"The only way to move forward, in order to strengthen the national meteorological and hydrological services was to call upon our policy-makers for political support in order to come up with policy frameworks to ensure that the strategies are there, which are budgeted to strengthen this information. Because Africa is the most vulnerable on adverse impact of climate change. And therefore there is dire need to provide more accurate information for adaptation and mitigation."

Rwanda's Minister for Infrastructure Vincent Karega notes his country is now taking active plans to improve meteorological services.

"In Rwanda, we are restructuring meteorological services by investing in technology, in skills development, in policies. And at the same time, we are linking up with East Africa to harmonize and pool our resources and commitment together so that we can have proper information and evidence regarding climate change and then come up with concrete actions of prevention, of mitigation, of proper planning in different sectors that are affected by climate change."

Margareta Wahlstr?m, Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Disaster Risk Reduction says if climate change is going to be dealt with in Africa, policy makers have to have access to the best information from areas ranging from infrastructure to planning and finance.

The two-day conference will conclude on Friday.

Wei Tong, CRI News, Nairobi, Kenya.