Program to Help Developing Nations Forecast Natural Disasters Loses Funding

This post contains a correction.

The National Center for Atmospheric Research has shut down a $500,000 program that helps developing nations predict and prepare for natural disasters such as droughts, floods, and cyclones, Andrew Revkin reports in The New York Times. The program, called the Center for Capacity Building, was created in 2004.

The program served a critical need for poor nations that lack the forecasting infrastructure to accurately predict or sufficiently prepare for natural disasters that ravage their population, cripple weak economies, and destroy food and water supplies.

Writing recently about the “Staggering Cyclone Nargis Catastrophe,” Chris Mooney argued that effective warning systems and evacuation plans have been effective:

Although the Yucatan and Central America got smacked by back-to-back Category 5 storms [in 2003]—Hurricanes Dean and Felix were both far more powerful, meteorologically, than Cyclones Sidr and Nargis—the combined death toll was only 162. That’s because nations like Mexico, Nicaragua, and Honduras warned their populations and, in some cases, evacuated people in vulnerable areas.

Cyclone Nargis, by comparison, claimed the lives of 138,000 people in Bangladesh. Accurate forecasting and disaster preparedness , which the Center for Capacity Building sought to implement, can save lives.

According to Revkin, the Center for Capacity Building was primarily funded by the National Science Foundation, and was shut down due to “shrinking federal science budgets.” A recent supplemental appropriations bill for various scientific organizations, including NSF, is not sufficient to sustain essential scientific programs, and federal scientific budgets should be further increased.

Correction:  This post misstated the funding for the Center for Capacity Building as $500 million; it is $500,000

Tags: Climate Change

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