What happened
On 11 November, at the COP31 climate conference in Antalya, UN Secretary-General António Guterres urged the world to protect every person on Earth with early warnings by the end of 2027. He spoke at a high-level event on the Early Warnings for All initiative, as a new report from the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) was presented.
What the report says
- 136 countries, or 70 per cent of the total, now report having multi-hazard early warning systems. That is 17 more than in March 2025.
- Countries with substantial to comprehensive systems record disaster-related mortality 6.1 times lower than those with limited to moderate ones, and 3.2 times fewer people affected.
- In 2025, 146 anticipatory action activations in 54 countries reached 9.6 million people before disasters struck.
What it looks like on the ground
After the magnitude 8.8 earthquake off Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula in July 2025, the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center issued its first threat messages within 10 minutes. Japan evacuated about 1.9 million people. In Rwanda's Karongi district, a tea farmer was warned through women's cooperatives, SMS, local radio and loudspeakers that heavy rain was expected within 48 hours, which gave her time to protect her terraces and her harvest.
The remaining gaps
About one in three countries still has no early warning system, Mr. Guterres said. The widest gaps are in least developed countries, small island developing States and countries affected by conflict. Since 2022, about 2 billion dollars have been mobilised and around 160 countries receive support. The Secretary-General said funding must cover the whole chain, from weather forecasting to volunteers knocking on doors. The WMO chief, Celeste Saulo, warned that the current El Niño could be “literally off our monitoring charts”.
What remains to be confirmed
This article relies on a single source, UN News. We did not read the UNDRR and WMO report itself, so the figures are those reported by the UN.
