Nov 03, 2021
The Climate Investment Funds (CIF), a member of The Alliance for Hydromet Development, has just launched its ‘Learning Review of CIF-supported Hydromet and Climate Services Projects’ today. The report takes stock of progress in CIF’s Pilot Program for Climate Resilience (PPCR) project investments in the development and delivery of hydromet and climate services (HMCS) and presents lessons learned for effective financing of HMCS.
CIF’s ‘Learning Review of CIF-supported Hydromet and Climate Services Projects’ analyzes 11 country-specific projects in Bolivia, Dominica, Grenada, Haiti, Jamaica, Mozambique, Niger, Nepal, Tajikistan, Saint Lucia, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and a dedicated Caribbean Regional project. The report identifies good practices, priorities, and recommendations for more effective, sustainable, adaptive, and resilient investments in hydromet and climate services moving forward.
Based on extensive desk research, interviews, and workshops, the review found that PPCR projects helped make significant investments in strengthening observation and monitoring networks, laying the essential groundwork for improved forecasting and services. However, for some projects, investments available for service development and delivery have been limited. It also discovered that the most effective observations and monitoring and service delivery are made when a country’s National Meteorological and Hydrological Service (NMHS) works jointly with other line ministries and end users to deliver new services. Building wide-ranging partnerships is critical to gaining access to and improving global/regional weather predictions along with delivering services to specific sectors, such as water resources, transport, health, and agriculture. The review underlined the importance of transferring science-based, national weather services into more accessible service providers who could relay important, but highly technical weather information, in a manner that was hyper-focused to local needs and easy to understand.
Additionally, based on lessons learned from PPCR HMCS projects, a number of project design and implementation recommendations were derived to inform more effective investment in hydromet and climate services.
Recommendations for HMCS project design include:
- The alignment of project designs to a national long-term strategy for the modernization of HMCS that should include flexibility and contingencies when working in politically unstable and highly vulnerable developing country contexts.
- The understanding that project design should start with an emphasis on user needs and work backwards along the climate services value chain to identify investments in observations, and modelling, needed to support these services.
- The co-design of projects to allow active learning from users of weather and climate services and allow feedback to improve product design and delivery of services.
- Sustainability must be a core principle in the design of HMCS projects, to ensure the operational costs of managing observation networks and improved services can continue to be met after project completion.
Recommendations for HMCS project implementation include:
- The development of strong partnerships with different government ministries, including establishing clear mandates for i) providing hydromet services, and ii) sharing core climate data. This ensures HMCS are well targeted to meet user requirements and avoid the development of competing observation networks or services.
- Targeted capacity building and skills development to retain key technical staff within the hydromet system to strengthen and develop partnerships that provide proper expertise moving forward.
- Increased investment in NHMS strategy and long-term planning in order to make a stronger business case for capital investment and operational funding. Ultimately, public weather services are essential to prevent severe damage and losses from extreme weather events and hydromet-related natural hazards, with their concomitant impacts on key economic sectors in developing countries.
The Alliance for Hydromet Development brings together major international development, humanitarian, and climate finance institutions to scale up and unite efforts to improve weather, climate, hydrological and related environmental information services. While reducing greenhouse gas emissions is critical, in 2021, the United Nations called for an increase in adaptation and resilience measures, with significant increases in the volume of adaptation finance. By examining its PPCR portfolio of HMCS projects from some of the world’s most vulnerable countries to climate risks, the ‘Learning Review of CIF-supported Hydromet and Climate Services Projects’ provides lessons and opportunities for more effective, sustainable, and resilient investments in hydromet and climate services.
Read the full learning review here and a summary brief here.
