Top Swiss politician warns of ‘inevitable’ glacier collapse

Baume-Schneider warns of inevitable glacier collapse Keystone-SDA

Surveillance of the village of Blatten enabled some people to be evacuated. But the melting permafrost will inevitably lead to more glaciers collapsing and more rocks falling, Interior Minister Elisabeth Baume-Schneider told the UN in Geneva on Monday.

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The member states of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) are meeting from Monday to Thursday to try to redouble their efforts to equip all countries with early warning systems by 2027. “We are aware that this is not a 100-metre sprint but rather a marathon,” Baume-Schneider admitted as she opened the meeting.

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But climate change makes it urgent to make progress on the global initiative launched in 2022 by UN Secretary General António Guterres and led by the WMO. “The marathon must be run at a pace as close as possible to a sprint,” Baume-Schneider insisted.

According to the WMO, more than 100 countries can now rely on a warning system. But this figure is still far from the target.

Translated from French by DeepL/ts

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