Adapting to Climate Change: Assessing the World Bank Group ...

CHAPTER 3CLIMATE VARIABILITYhigh-quality analytic work is needed to demonstrate the effectiveness of ecologicalbasedand non-structural methods.3.76 Most of this support has been aimed at coping with high-frequency disasters orin covering urgent liquidity needs for more serious disasters. There remains asignificant financing gap for catastrophic coverage, and attempts to address thisthrough support for catastrophe bonds are unlikely to provide much impact.Hydromet ServicesCONTEXT: UNDERINVESTMENT, UNDERUSE, AND UNCAPTURED BENEFITS OF HYDROMET SYSTEMS3.77 Hydrometeorological information offers a wide range of potential benefits for ACV.Hydromet systems produce disaster warnings that allow for preventative actions thatreduce the damage done by climate disasters. Farmers can move livestock to high groundbefore floods; cities can prepare roads for heavy snowfall; dam operators can start reducingreservoir levels and so reduce the peak flood size. Non-disaster weather forecasts alsoprovide economic benefits: farmers need to know when it will rain so they can avoidhaving their fertilizer washed away. And there are indirect benefits from having a longrecord of hydromet data. Rainfall data is an input into the modeling work needed to createweather insurance products. River flow data is needed to design and estimate the benefitsfrom irrigation systems or hydropower plants. In addition, all forms of climate data helpimprove the calibration and validation of long-term climate models, contributing to ACC.3.78 There are strong reasons to expect hydromet data to be underprovided andunderused. First, hydromet data is a public good. It is expensive to create, but costsrelatively little to broadcast and share. Such public goods should be publicly funded. But ifcash-strapped countries spend too little on hydromet agencies, the agencies may be forcedto sell data, shutting out some people who might benefit. Second, hydromet data is anetwork good. Denser networks make for more accurate forecasts at the regional or globallevel, but countries may not take account of these spillover benefits when planning theirown network of weather stations. Third, there is a chicken-and-egg problem with datasupply and demand. Until people understand the benefits of weather forecasts, there maybe little demand for hydromet data. But without demand, agencies may be unwilling toinvest in expanding their systems.3.79 In both developing and developed countries, hydromet data are often not freelyshared, despite World Meteorological Organization mandates. (Peterson and Manton 2008;Viglione., Borga and others 2010) In part, this is because underfunded hydromet agenciessell data to support their operations. But there is often a lack of data-sharing betweenmeteorology and hydrology agencies even within a country.56