| Overview : The Vision, the Government of Uganda is implementing the National Development Plan(NDPII-2015/16-2019/20) whose theme is “Strengthening Uganda’s Competitiveness for Sustainable Wealth Creation, Employment and Inclusive Growth’’, with the main goal of attaining middle income status by 2020. One of the strategic objectives of NDP II is to increase Sustainable Production, Productivity and Value Addition in Key Growth Opportunities. On the other hand, Uganda’s economic and human development is closely tied to a number of climate-sensitive resources and sectors, such as agriculture, water, environment, natural resources, health, transport and housing. The NDP II recognizes that if proactive and adaptive actions are not taken to respond to the climate and disaster risks, then Uganda’s transformation could be slowed down. This is because Uganda is susceptible to natural hazards, 70 per cent of which are of hydro-meteorological in origin. Examples include floods, droughts, thunderstorms, hailstorms, and landslides. As an example, Uganda experienced 2,500 disasters in the last decade, and in 2010-2011 rainfall variability costed the country about USD 1.2 billion Factoring weather and climate information into agricultural decision-making has optimized agricultural production in many countries. However, in developing countries – where most smallholder farms are rain-fed – access to weather and climate information to guide decision-making is limited. Furthermore, the National Hydro-meteorological and Hydrological Services in developing countries, including the Uganda’s National Meteorological Authority (UNMA), do not receive sufficient funding to cover the cost of providing such services. This could be due to a lack of Government’s awareness of the contribution of hydro-meteorological services to socio-economic development of the country. This lack of awareness exists even though Governments face major challenges and constraints in agriculture, water resources management, health and disaster risk reduction, among others, all of which are heavily influenced by weather and climate. Despite occurrences of drought with the attendant crop failure and occasional famine, flooding with the resultant loss of human life and destruction of property and the impacts of other phenomena on socio-economic development, there has been very limited research done to quantify the benefit of weather and climate information and services to development efforts. The situation persists because National Meteorological and Hydrological Services in developing countries, including the Uganda, do not receive sufficient funding to cover the cost of providing such services. This could be attributed to a lack of awareness by the Policy Makers and Budget Holders, of the contribution of hydro-meteorological services to socio-economic development in the country. To cope with changes in climate and weather conditions, reliable and timely early warning information is required for planning at both the policy and end-user levels. It is for this reason that the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Uganda with funding from the Global Environment Facility (GEF) has since 2013 been supporting the Government of Uganda to improve its infrastructure and systems for monitoring and forecasting the weather, climate and disaster information for preparedness and disaster management in the country. The GoU/UNDP’s “Strengthening Climate Information and Early Warning System (SCIEWS) project in Uganda” is being implemented by the Ministry of Water and Environment’s Uganda National Hydro-meteorological Authority (UNMA) and the Directorate of Water Resource Management (DWRM), in collaboration with key responsible partners including: the Department of Relief, Disaster Preparedness and Management (DRDPM) in the Office of the Prime Minister (OPM); the Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industries and Fisheries (MAAIF), the Ministry of Local Governments; the Uganda Communications Commission (UCC), and the Ministry of Finance Planning and Economic Development as the Donor Coordinator. The project has been implemented across the country, with pilot testing of its results in 28 Districts from four sub-regions of Elgon, Karamoja, Teso and Lango, in Eastern and Northern Uganda. Over the past four years, the UNDP-GEF funded SCIEWS project, among other projects have made significant investment in hydro-met services to revamp or improve the capacity of the Uganda National Hydro-meteorological Authority (UNMA) and the Directorate of Water Resources Management (DWRM) to generate and monitor hydro-hydro-meteorological information and disseminating to end users. As such, there has been a significant improvement in the functionality and quality of products from the hydro-meteorological systems across the country. This includes key technology transfer like: automatic weather stations; automatic water level stations; automatic message switching systems; the upper air observations; over and above: building the capacity of forecasters and observers; introducing a business model for expanding the revenue base of UNMA through better pricing of products to the aviation sector. The SCIEWS project aimed to avail the country with the opportunity to better manage climate hazards, food security and agricultural production, scarce and dwindling water resources and make its socioeconomic development process less vulnerable to climate-related risks by: - Enhancing the capacity of hydro-hydro-meteorological services and networks to monitor and predict weather and climate events and associated risks e.g. floods, droughts and severe storms;
- Developing effective and efficient ways of packaging weather and climate information, including contextualising with other environmental and socio-economic data to produce early warnings/alerts and advisories; and
- Supporting improved and timely preparedness and response to weather and climate information and early warnings, including efficient delivery mechanisms using radio and telecommunications network.
The project has been implemented across the whole country, with pilot testing of its results in 28 Districts from four sub-regions of Elgon, Karamoja, Teso and Lango mostly in Eastern Uganda. One of the outputs from the project was a study on the cost-benefit-analysis of the meteorological services with a focus on products for the aviation sub-sector. This consultancy will build onto the outcome of the cost-benefit study, to deepen understanding on the value of hydro-met products, with a public-private sector perspective to sustainability of these services. |
