UN sets 5-year goal to broaden climate early warning systems
By JAMEY KEATEN
Associated Press
GENEVA (AP) — The chief of the United Nations has announced a project to put every person on Earth in range of early warning systems for natural disasters within five years. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the project with the Geneva-based World Meteorological Organization aims to make the alert systems already used by many rich countries available to the developing world as disasters have grown more powerful and frequent due to climate change. Guterres said it was unacceptable that one-third of the world’s people are still not covered by early warning systems. The idea behind the systems is that more lead time allows people to prepare for potentially deadly disasters such as heat waves, forest fires, flooding and tropical storms.
