News Excerpt: 

India is helping Nepal, Maldives, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Mauritius develop early warning systems to reduce the loss of life and property due to extreme weather events.

More about the News: 

• The director-general of the India Meteorological Department (IMD) said India will act as a big brother and peer advisor to Nepal, Maldives, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Mauritius in their efforts to guard against the impact of extreme weather events.
• India's efforts are part of the 'Early Warnings for All' initiative announced by the United Nations in 2022 to ensure that everyone is protected from hazardous weather, water or climate events through life-saving early warning systems by the end of 2027.

Technical and Financial support to be given: 

• India is helping five of the 30 countries in the first phase of the initiative to establish early warning systems.
• According to IMD, around 50% of the countries do not have an early warning system.
• Poor countries, least developed countries, and small island nations, such as the Maldives and Seychelles, do not have the capacity to provide early warning about extreme weather events. 
• Therefore, people are dying and losing a lot of property because of disasters,
• Financial support will be provided through public-private partnerships.
• Countries like India have pledged to provide technical support, 
• India will help these five countries set up meteorological observatories, allow them access to its numerical models, and create a decision support system and computing power. 
• The IMD will provide forecasts and warnings, and Ministries of Communication of the respective nations have been roped in to help develop a system for data exchange and warning dissemination,

Natural disasters on the rise: According to a report released by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) in December, 

• 101 countries (52%) now have multi-hazard early warning systems.
• The WMO's findings show a concerning trend as disasters increased over five times between 1970 and 2019. 
• Water-related disasters became the most common globally.
• Tropical cyclones cause the most harm to people and economies.
• From 1970 to 2021, the world witnessed nearly 12,000 weather, climate, or water-related disasters, resulting in more than two million deaths and USD 4.3 trillion in economic losses.
• Around 41,789 people died annually from disasters between 2015 and 2022. The number of people affected by disasters has been rising, with more than 130 million affected globally every year.
• In Asia, from 2013 to 2022, more than 146,000 people lost their lives due to disasters, and over 911 million were directly affected. 
• Economic damages in 2022 were over USD 36 billion, mostly due to flooding and storms.
• By 2030, the world is projected to face 560 medium- to large-scale disasters each year. 
• Climate change makes disasters more likely and makes it harder to respond to them.