Climate Services: Global Framework

This is the eighth of ten interviews with climate and development experts conducted at the International Conference on Climate Services, held at Columbia University in October 2011.

Jerry Lengoasa is the Deputy Secretary General of the World Meteorological Organization. In this interview he describes the thinking behind the Global Framework for Climate Services, which aims to improve climate services for all countries, but especially in climate vulnerable developing countries.

One of the challenges in implementing this framework is that capability and ability isn’t universally uniform. Developing countries are amongst the most vulnerable to [climate change’s] likely impacts…are again the very ones who do not have the kind of in depth knowledge of what the current climate is and how it is likely to change and therefore what they need to adapt to. The developed world has a lot of that capability already, whether it is in modeling terms, whether it is analysis, whether it’s having finished products. And so the key question is how do we bridge the gap between those that have the knowledge and those that do not have the knowledge, those that have the capacity and those who do not have the capacity, and the capability?

Learn more on the ICCS website and the Climate Services Partnership.