On June 18, the Global Humanitarian Forum and its President, former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, together with its partners announced an essential humanitarian endeavor and innovative public-private partnership scheme: the “Weather Info for All” Initiative.
The event was held at the Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction, in Geneva, Switzerland and was attended by a number of personalities who presented the rationale for this Initiative and its benefits for the world’s poorest and most vulnerable to climate change.
At this occasion, the Forum’s President, Kofi Annan, declared that ““The world’s poorest are also the world’s most vulnerable when it comes to the impact of climate change, and the least equipped to deal with its consequences. Today you find cell phone towers in almost every part of Africa. We have never been able to establish weather monitoring on that scale, until now.”
Also present at the launch were: Michel Jarraud, Secretary General of the WMO, Carl-Henric Svanberg, CEO of Ericsson, Lord Simon Cairns, Chairman of Zain Africa, as well as Margareta Wahlström, UN Assistant Secretary General for Disaster Risk Reduction.
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