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In 2022, the United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres declared that ‘all people on Earth must be protected by early warning systems within five years’. He launched the Early Warnings for All initiative the same year to make this a reality by 2027. In the Pacific, the regionally led Weather Ready Pacific Programme endorsed by the Pacific Leaders Forum in 2021 is the key vehicle for delivering the Early Warnings for All initiative.

The Early Warnings for All initiative itself complements other roadmaps designed to reduce disaster risk. In the Pacific, there is the 2050 Strategy for the Blue Pacific Continent (2022) and the Framework for Resilient Development in the Pacific (2016) adopted by the Pacific Islands Forum Leaders.

At global level, there is The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (2015) and the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015 –2030 adopted by the United Nations.

All of these strategies have one thing in common: they identify strengthening early warning systems as being a critical component of building resilience to disasters and, by extension, contributing to sustainable development.

The Early Warnings for All initiative comprises four pillars: acquiring knowledge, including via risk assessments; detection, monitoring and forecasting; communicating warnings; and preparedness and response.

The Pacific geohazards community is aligning its efforts with both the Early Warnings for All initiative and the Weather Ready Pacific Programme.

However, to do so effectively, it will be necessary to develop a regional geohazards strategy to improve coordination and unlock the resources needed to reduce geohazard risk in the Pacific.

Preventive measures need not be expensive. By protecting mangrove forests along the coast, for instance, we can ensure that they attenuate the impact of tsunami waves. By respecting building codes, we can make buildings more resistant to earthquakes, including hospitals and schools.

Remember, earthquakes don’t kill, collapsing buildings do.

Did you know that it was UNESCO’s Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission which set up the first International Tsunami Information Center in Hawaii in 1965 as part of the new tsunami early warning system? The Pacific Ocean Basin was chosen for this first centre, owing to its great vulnerability to this type of geohazard.

The International Tsunami Information Center complements the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center, also in Hawaii. Together, they are at the heart of the Pacific Tsunami Warning and Mitigation System. Following the 17 December earthquake in Vanuatu, it was the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center which provided national tsunami warning centres with bulletins advising them that there was no imminent threat of a tsunami.

The inhabitants of Banda Aceh were not so lucky. As they lived just 65 km from the epicentre of the underwater earthquake in December 2004, Aceh was hit by shockwaves just half an hour after the earthquake occurred. Even had an early warning system been in place in the Indian Ocean at the time, the Banda Aceh population could not have been alerted to the tsunami in time but tremor and tidal gauges, rapid data transfer, alarm mechanisms and training in the danger zones would have provided ample time for coastal inhabitants to flee to higher ground in the other countries hit by the tsunami over the next 12 hours. 

Since the 2004 catastrophe, 91Â鶹¹ú²ú¾«Æ·×ÔÅÄ opened the Indian Ocean Tsunami Information Centre which it hosts in Jakarta, Indonesia.

UNESCO and its partners plan to accelerate plans for the region’s own multigeohazard early warning system at a regional workshop in Apia on 24–28 February 2025.