El Niño Early Warning for Sustainable Development in Pacific Rim Countries and Islands
13-16 September 2004, Galapagos Islands, Ecuador

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The Centro Internacional para la Investigación del Fenómeno de El Niño, CIIFEN (Guayaquil, Ecuador) and the National Center for Atmospheric Research (Boulder, Colorado) organized a workshop entitled “El Niño Early Warning for Sustainable Development in Pacific Rim Countries and Islands.” The workshop was held in the Galapagos Islands 13 - 16 September 2004. Support for this activity was provided by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the US National Science Foundation (NSF), the Inter-American Institute (IAI), the UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (ISDR), the Intergovernmental Oceanic Commission (IOC) of UNESCO, the Asia Pacific Network for Global Change Research (APN) and the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

There is considerable (and growing) interest around the globe in Early Warning Systems (EWSs) for a wide range of hazards and threats, both natural and anthropogenic. Many researchers are interested in EWSs to improve their efforts to study ecosystem responses, including human responses, to various “shocks.” Growing interest in all aspects of early warnings is evident, from constructing and issuing warnings to ensuring appropriate responses to the warning, as well as to the impacts of the hazard. The Internet has contributed to the dramatic increase in attention to EWSs. Many EWSs are related to hydrometeorological events such as droughts, floods, fires, frost, disease outbreaks, and El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) events.

This activity is a follow-up to the recent “Early Warning Systems: Do's and Don'ts” workshop held in Shanghai, China in October 2003. The report of this workshop can be found at www.ccb.ucar.edu/warning. Another related event was the Second International Early Warning Conference (EWCII) held by the ISDR in Bonn in October 2003. The report of this conference can be found at www.ewc2.org.

One key recommendation of the Shanghai workshop was that serious attention must be given by governments to the role of EWSs in sustainable development progress. Participants to the Galapagos workshop were drawn from different disciplines, countries, and organizations that deal with either early warning systems or sustainable development in Pacific Rim countries and islands. In addition to identifying how El Niño forecasts and knowledge can be used to foster sustainable development, the workshop organizers and supporters sought to foster interactions by physical and social scientists in the Pacific Rim countries and islands.

CIIFEN was created in early 2003 to establish an ENSO prediction research center in Guayaquil. Its creation is the result of cooperative efforts between the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the Government of Ecuador, and the UN/International Strategy for Disaster Reduction. The aim of CIIFEN is to establish a bridge between the scientific, socioeconomic, and political communities concerned with El Niño-related events.

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