Daily Times

China sought coop with Pakistan and other Asian countries in monitoring, warning meteorological disasters, according to China Economic Net (CEN).

Yu Yong, Deputy Administrator of China Meteorological Administration (CMA) said that global community should join hands to enhance disaster monitoring and early warning capabilities, and promote the sharing of disaster risk and early warning information for Pakistan and other ‘Belt and Road’ countries.” He was addressing here the 2021 Workshop on Regional Disaster Warning Capacity Enhancement in Asia.

Hosted by CMA Public Meteorological Service Centre (PMSC, National Early Warning Center), the workshop was attended by officials, experts and representatives in the fields of early warning and disaster reduction management from European, North American and Asian countries.

According to The State of the Climate in Asia 2020, a multi-agency report released by World Meteorological Organization (WMO) on October 26, climate-related hazards, especially floods, storms and droughts, affect people and their livelihood in many parts of Asia.

Moreover, the COVID-19 pandemic complicated disaster management efforts and countries faced the dual challenge of tackling the pandemic and climate-related hazards.

For some countries the impact was significant when translated into percentage of GDP, which was the case for India, the Islamic Republic of Iran, Bangladesh and Pakistan, where damages exceed 0.5% of GDP, said the report.Therefore, “in a region as vast and diverse as this, cooperation and collaboration are crucial not only in disaster risk reduction, but also in many other priority areas,” Ben Churchill – Head of Regional Office for Asia and the South-West Pacific, WMO – pinpointed, adding that information sharing allows people to leverage available resources and promptly identify gaps in capabilities, ensuring that people work efficiently and effectively.

On top of that, as online communication takes the lead amid the pandemic era, it is suggested to build an online sharing platform for members of WMO Regional Association for Asia (RAII) to promote regional and sub-regional cooperation.

Cao Zhiyu, senior engineer of National Early Warning Center, China, mentioned that for BRI countries, the meteorological support is committed in particular at regional level to a warning-based co-preparedness, in which warning related systems, techniques, products and ideas will be shared with China’s surrounding developing countries while contributing to Global Meteorological Alerting System (GMAS) at the same time. The workshop was aimed to further strengthen the exchange of national meteorological early warning information between China and BRI countries, and summarize the effective experiences of different countries in response to various emergencies in recent years, and discuss the capabilities that countries need to improve urgently from innovation, in order to promote further cooperation between countries in disaster early warning through Global Multi-Hazard Alert System in Asia (GMAS-A).