Guyana is to be represented at the high-level segment of the World Climate Conference at the Geneva International Conference Centre (GICC) in Geneva, Switzerland today and tomorrow.

The Conference is organised by the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) of the United Nations.

Minister of Agriculture, Robert Persaud, will deliver an address to the conference as well as co-chair one of the high-level plenary sessions with Mr. Paavo Vayrynen, Minister for Foreign Trade and Development of Finland.

Scores of Heads of State and hundreds of Government Ministers are expected to participate in the Conference which is anticipated to attract the attendance of more than 2,000 participants. It is expected that Guyana’s Low Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS) and its potential impact on the global climate change agenda will feature prominently.

Under the theme of “Climate prediction and information for decision-making,” the World Climate Conference (WCC) will bring together Heads of State and Government, and Ministers and Heads of UN and other international organisations, as well as climate scientists, world experts in the provision and application of climate information concerned with the implications of climate variability and change.

The Conference also seeks to identify the essential elements of a global framework for meeting the future climate information needs of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) as the world heads to the Copenhagen Summit on Climate Change in December.

Further, the major expected outcomes of WCC-3 are a conference statement identifying the needs for climate services and the current and developing capabilities and mechanisms for meeting these needs, and a declaration that will propose a strategy for developing climate services through establishing a Global Framework for Climate Services.

“Until now, the way that we deliver climate information to some sectors has been ad hoc. What we need is a formal system that all people can trust to access vital information that can save their lives and protect property and economies,” said Mr. Michel Jarraud, Secretary-General of the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), which is convening WCC with the host country Switzerland and partners this week in Geneva.

“The Global Framework will enable such a formalised system, by boosting the observations and research we have available for monitoring the climate and then facilitating the creation of sector- and regional-specific products and services that will be readily available to all who need it,” Jarraud added.

“Extreme weather events and changing climatic conditions affect all of us, frequently resulting in humanitarian disasters and heavy losses,” stressed Hans-Rudolf Merz, President of the Swiss Confederation, host country of WCC.

“The objective of WCC-3 is to avoid such disasters, and to provide public authorities with the required tools – precipitation forecasts, hazard maps, early warning systems, and long-term environmental prospects. These forecasts have to be translated for decision-makers in their respective sectors like food security, water management, health care and tourism, for instance.”

“We are faced with an enormous, yet imperative, task – to lay the groundwork for all countries, all sectors, all people impacted by climate variability and change to take decisive actions to adapt to the changing landscape,” said Dr Gro Harlem Brundtland, United Nations Secretary-General’s Special Envoy on Climate Change.

“We can not only rely on individual projects or individual agencies to undertake this task. The international community needs to unite to make science-based information on climate available to all,” he reasoned. (GINA)