Roadmap for Implementation of Early Warning for All (EW4ALL) Initiative 2024-2027/2030
Designed and developed by: Z M Sajjadul Islam, Coordinator of Early Warning for All (EW4ALL) , Dated: December 2024
Executive Summary
The Early Warnings for All (EW4ALL) initiative, launched by the UN Secretary-General in 2022, aims to ensure that everyone worldwide is protected by early warning systems by 2027, prioritizing the most vulnerable populations. In Somalia, UNDP is supporting SoDMA/NDMO in developing a national Roadmap to implement this initiative, including completing a gap analysis and outlining actions to strengthen early warning capabilities.
A whole-of-society approach—involving government, civil society, private sector, and communities—is essential to build effective and sustainable early warning services. An intersectional lens is equally important, recognizing that climate and disaster risks affect people differently based on gender, age, and other factors. Inclusive and equitable early warning systems better protect vulnerable groups.
Somalia faces increasing climate-related risks and conflict pressures, with issues such as water scarcity intensifying tensions. Strengthened multi-hazard early warning systems (MHEWS) connected to early action are critical for building resilience, enhancing adaptation, and reducing disaster impacts.
Although Somalia has established the National Multi-Hazard Early Warning Centre (NMHEWC), significant infrastructural, institutional, and dissemination gaps remain. To address these, SoDMA/NDMO is calling for the national rollout of EW4ALL, finalization of the gap analysis, and endorsement of a comprehensive roadmap to expand MHEWS coverage and empower communities—especially the most vulnerable—to act early and reduce risk.
Contents
1.2 Goals and Objectives EW4ALL. 8
1.4 Rationale of National Multi-hazard Early Warning Center (NMHEWC) installation. 9
1.5 SoDMA EW4ALL initiative. 9
2.0 Somalian multi-hazard, disaster phenomena & climate change trend. 11
2.1 Somalian current climate projection: 14
2.2 Climate trends, impacts, and Stressors. 14
3.0 Pillar Specific Goal, Outcome, and Workplan. 16
3.1.1 Pillar 1 Gap Identification on Disaster Risk Knowledge. 16
3.1.2 Step forward to close the gap of Pillar 1 Disaster Risk Knowledge. 18
3.1.3 Proposed key actions for closing the indicated gaps : Disaster Risk Knowledge. 18
3.1.4 The Roadmap ahead for Pillar 1: Improved Disaster Risk Knowledge management System.. 23
3.1.5 Work Plan for Pillar 1. 28
3.2 Roadmap Pillar 2: Observation, monitoring, analysis, and forecasting, 30
3.2.1 Pillar 2 Gap Identification: Observation, monitoring, analysis, and forecasting. 31
3.2.3 Proposed Roadmap for Pillar 2 : Observation, monitoring, analysis, and forecasting. 38
3.2.4 Work Plan for Pillar 2 : Observation, monitoring, analysis, and forecasting. 43
3.3 Roadmap Pillar 3: Warning dissemination and communication. 47
3.3.1 Pillar 3 Indicative gaps : Warning dissemination and communication. 48
3.3.2 Proposed essential action for closing Pillar 3 gaps. 48
3.3.3 The roadmap for Pillar 3 : Enhancing effective dissemination and communication. 54
3.3.4 Workplan Pillar 3 : Warning dissemination and communication. 58
3.4 Roadmap Pillar 4: Preparedness and response capabilities. 62
3.4.1 Indicative Gaps on Pillar 4 -Preparedness and response capabilities. 62
3.4.2 Roadmap outlined actions for closing the Gaps on Pillar 4 by 2027 and beyond. 64
3.4.3 Roadmap ahead for Pillar 4 by 2027 and beyond. 68
3.4.4 Work Plan for Pillar 4 (Preparedness, timely responses and early actions) 70
4.0 Monitoring & Evaluation Plan of EW4ALL Pillars. 74
1.0 Introduction: EW4ALL
Somalia urgently needs risk-informed planning tools, stronger disaster risk governance, and improved thematic forecasting, weather warnings, and public alerting to better prepare for, respond to, and recover from extreme climate events. The country is already facing substantial losses and damages driven by human-induced climate change, with droughts, floods, and other hydrometeorological hazards repeatedly impacting vital economic sectors—especially agriculture and livestock, which employ most of the population and contribute significantly to GDP.
Climate-related losses in the agriculture sector alone amounted to an estimated US$5.68 billion between 2000 and 2021, with about half attributable to climate change. On average, US$129 million in climate-related crop and livestock losses occur annually. Recurrent droughts, such as those from 2008–2011, triggered severe food insecurity and famine conditions affecting 17% of the population in southern and central Somalia, compounded by structural vulnerabilities including conflict and limited humanitarian access.
Overall, Somalia’s direct economic impacts from droughts and floods averaged 7.9% of GDP from 2000–2021 (excluding the extreme 2010 drought), with roughly half of these losses linked to climate change. Including the 2010/2011 drought raises climate-attributable losses to 8.4% of GDP. These losses equaled 86% of government revenues on average, underscoring the country’s extreme fiscal vulnerability.
To address these challenges, Somalia envisions the Early Warnings for All (EW4ALL) system as a national center of excellence for climate-proof development planning. EW4ALL aims to provide policymakers with evidence-based tools for risk-informed budgeting, programming, and implementation, while also strengthening Somalia’s access to global risk financing mechanisms.
The EW4ALL Roadmap (2024–2027/2030) lays out the pathway for implementing the four pillars of EW4ALL and guiding the evolution of a comprehensive Multi-Hazard Early Warning System (MHEWS). This system would support disaster risk management, disaster risk reduction, and climate change adaptation by integrating hazard forecasting, warning dissemination, institutional coordination, and legal frameworks. Establishing clear roles and responsibilities is critical for ensuring smooth, end-to-end early warning processes.
Although early warning systems are proven, cost-effective tools that can deliver tenfold returns on investment, major gaps persist—particularly in converting early warnings into timely, risk-informed early actions. Strengthening EW4ALL in Somalia is therefore fundamental to safeguarding lives, livelihoods, and national development amid escalating climate risks.
1.1 Vision EW4ALL
The National EW4ALL roadmap envisions that by 2027, all Somali people will be protected by a robust, government-led multi-hazard early warning system.
1.2 Principles EW4ALL
Somalia’s Roadmap for implementing the Early Warnings for All (EW4ALL) initiative is grounded in core principles that uphold strong disaster risk governance and guide the functioning of the National Multi-Hazard Early Warning System (NMHEWS). These principles ensure that early warning services are ethical, inclusive, trusted, and effective.
Accountability: All governmental and non-governmental actors must be responsible for the accuracy and reliability of the early warning information they produce and share.
Credibility: Early warning data and analysis must come from trusted, authoritative sources to ensure user confidence and promote timely action.
Do No Harm: All actions related to early warning and disaster risk management must avoid causing harm or unnecessary suffering.
Ethical Conduct: Decision-making and operations must uphold human life, dignity, and ethical values at all times.
Impartiality: Early warning information must be objective and free from bias, discrimination, or favoritism toward any group or community.
Leaving No One Behind: Early warning systems must address the needs of vulnerable groups—including women, youth, children, persons with disabilities, and the elderly—to ensure inclusivity and equity.
Neutrality: Early warning processes must remain independent of political, religious, or social affiliations, ensuring services reach all communities fairly.
People-Centered and Community-Oriented: Early warnings should incorporate local knowledge and be developed collaboratively with communities, focusing on last-mile communication and ensuring that people understand and can act on the warnings.
Transparency: Early warning data and products should be openly accessible to the public, operating within clear legal frameworks at federal and state levels to strengthen trust and public benefit.
1.2 Goals and Objectives EW4ALL
Early Warnings for All is built on four pillars that are the cornerstones of the initiative and of effective multi-hazard early warning. The purpose of this Roadmap is to identify the current gaps in the four pillars of EW4ALL and suggest ways to overcome these gaps; more specifically, the roadmap aims to:
- Improve Disaster risk knowledge and management (led by UNDRR) : Enhance risk knowledge of institutions, stakeholders, and the frontline community. Enhance institutional risk assessment capacity, risk repository development, risk data, and tools to generate impact-based early warning products and information services.
Improve Detection, observation, monitoring, analysis, and forecasting (led by WMO) : Somali access to improved weather observation data for forecasting, access to global & regional forecasting products from GPCs, RSMCs, and HMHS. Formulation of national hydrometeorological plans, strategies, and legislation in hydromet observation and acquisition of Essential climate variables (ECV) , data calibration, collation, and data attribution
[1] Government of Somalia, 2018
[2] & 3 Pastoralism and Agriculture in Recurrent and Protracted Crisis (SPARC) programme, September 2024
- for meteorological forecasting. Enhance the National Multi-hazard Early Warning Center ( NMHEWC) in innovative forecasting, nowcasting, and prediction capability.
- Improve Warning dissemination and communication (led by ITU) : Enhance national institutional, stakeholders, and frontline capacity in the risk communication value chain, translating forecasts into localized early warning, common alerting, weather warning, and NMHS, SoDMA , local stakeholders’, and community capacity in the people-centered warning system.
- Better Preparedness and response capabilities (led by IFRC/FAO/SRCS): Enhance the capacity of SoDMA, Local government, local nonstate actors/stakeholders, and community capacity in disaster preparedness and response capacity. Improve instructional capacity in Disaster Risk Management (DRM), Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR), and resilience-building capacity.
Figure 1: Early Warning for All (EW4ALL) objective
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