About PPE

Public-Private Engagement encompasses interaction and collaboration between entities from the public, private, and business sectors, as well as academia and civil society, in the production and delivery of weather, climate, hydrological, marine, and related environmental data, information and services to users worldwide.

Vision

The global societal risks related to extreme weather, climate, water, and other environmental events should be addressed through interdisciplinary and multi-sectoral partnerships. The expanding opportunities in using meteorological, climatological, hydrological and related environmental information and services to inform critical decisions can foster increased societal and structural resilience and sustainable economic development.

Mission

Provide leadership and promote the high-level WMO policy on PPE, work with Members and partners to establish principles and guidance for successful public-private engagement; facilitate a continuous dialogue between players and stakeholders from public, private, academic sectors and civil society based on collaboration, trust, and mutual reinforcement.

Geneva Declaration 2019

The Geneva Declaration 2019: Building Community for Weather, Climate and Water Actions reflects the new paradigms of cooperation and partnership between stakeholders from all sectors of the weather enterprise to address extreme weather, climate change, water scarcity, and other environmental hazards.

Furthermore, the Open Consultative Platform serves as a vehicle for sustainable and constructive dialogue between the sectors, by articulating a common vision for the future of the weather enterprise in the coming decade and beyond.

Principles of Engagement

People first principle

Recognizing the core mandate of supporting local-to-global decisions related to saving lives and property and supporting economic productivity by providing essential, meteorological, climatological, hydrological and environmental information, WMO adheres to the “people-first” approach to public-private engagement and partnerships that have been promoted by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) and widely accepted as a vehicle to achieve the SDGs.

Mutual benefit

Successful and sustainable public-private engagement builds on contributions from both the public and the private sectors, with each sector contributing to the success of the other. While the public sector is more likely to invest in long-term programmes and the underpinning core infrastructures needed for sustained high-quality weather and climate monitoring, the private sector can be more responsive to targeted investments to bridge data gaps and meet special customers’ needs. The private sector is also faster at applying innovation and emerging technologies. The public sector’s deep understanding of societal needs and trusted connection with governing authorities are critical in assuring community safety through responsiveness to authoritative warnings. At the same time, the technological agility of the private sector may present opportunities to meet novel and emerging service needs.

Guiding Principles for Public-Private Engagement

A set of principles to guide successful public-private engagement described in the Guidelines for Public-private Engagement includes Advancing the overarching goals articulated in the WMO Convention, Shared value Sustainability Advancing together, Integrity, Sovereignty, and Transparency. See the Guidelines for Public-private Engagement in WMO official languages: Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish

PPE scope and purpose

PPE promotes cooperation between the stakeholders from the public, private and academic sectors, and civil society, in advancing weather and climate intelligence at all levels in addressing the rapidly growing and changing demand of society.

Through international multi-sectoral dialogues, PPE establishes a process to identify converging approaches to address major challenges of global weather, climate, and water enterprise. It reflects the interest of all WMO Programmes to take advantage of partnerships and innovation across all sectors in order to boost the availability of high-quality information and services. PPE fosters and maintains transparent, trusting, and sustainable collaboration of all stakeholders, and in doing so, supports the major WMO role in promoting free and unrestricted international sharing of data and products that make possible the operation of all stakeholders. In addition, PPE focuses on the WMO role of promulgating international standards to ensure quality, interoperability, efficiency, and provision of fit-for-purpose services across the enterprise.

PPE contributes to the efforts for reducing the capacity gap between developed and developing countries through targeted assistance in cooperation with development agencies. This involves an improved understanding of cross-sectoral collaboration, and structured national and regional dialogue to build trust and to promote good practice of public-private-academic collaboration under the diverse legislative and institutional frameworks.