Climate Exchange

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Building resilience to climate-related hazards

Pilot Program for Climate Resilience in Nepal and Yemen

he World Bank is helping the Governments of Nepal

(GoN) and Yemen (GoY) to increase their resilience to

climate change. In Nepal, the national hydrometeoro-

logical service (NMS) is the Ministry of Environment, Science

and Technology’s Department of Hydrology and Meteorology

(DHM); In Yemen, the NMS is the Civil Aviation Meteorology

Authority/Yemen Meteorological Service (CAMA/YMS). Aided

by the World Bank, these institutions are being strengthened

to improve essential weather, water and climate services. The

following account outlines the GoN and GoY projects, along

with details of further hydromet and climate information serv-

ices projects in Central Asia and Jamaica.

As in many of the least developed countries, Nepal’s DHM struggles

to maintain adequate staffing and cope with an extensive network

of manual observations, and cannot maintain 24/7

operations. Lacking extensive real-time data and upper

air observations, it has virtually no capacity to detect

and issue weather-related hazard warnings or identify

climate-related threats. As a result, there is relatively

little engagement with users, no explicit service deliv-

ery function, and no baseline from which to measure

service improvement.

In Yemen, the situation is slightly better. CAMA/YMS

focuses on 24/7 aviation weather services which are

provided on a cost recovery basis, and it provides basic

weather forecasts for the public and a variety of users.

The emphasis in Yemen is on extending the meteorolog-

ical and hydrological observing network and improving

hazardous weather warnings and climate forecasts. This

apacity

evelopment

The high altitude meteorological station operated by the Department of Hydrology and Meteorology in Nepal

Image: Stephan Bachenheimer