Edouard Dayan addressed the 16th World Meteorological Congress in Geneva on Tuesday.
UPU Director General Edouard Dayan underlined the postal sector’s importance in fighting climate change and responding to natural disasters when he spoke Tuesday at the opening of the 16th World Meteorological Congress.
The congress, held from May 16-June 3 in Geneva, gathers policy-making delegates from the World Meteorological Organization’s 183 member states.
“Postal infrastructure is often damaged or destroyed during natural disasters, be they earthquakes, floods, or hurricanes,” Dayan said. “Very often, postal services are critical for the affected populations, who, like we’ve seen recently in Japan, have only the Post to send news to their loved ones or receive gifts or money.”
Dayan thanked the WMO and Secretary General Michel Jarraud for supporting the creation of a UPU emergency fund to rebuild postal infrastructure after natural disasters. The administration and financial management of the fund, proposed in 2010 in response to numerous destructive disasters over the past several years, is expected to be approved by the UPU Council of Administration later this year.
Dayan also made reference to Posts’ attempts to impact climate change by reducing their own carbon footprint. “We have adopted an ambitious program to calculate the carbon footprint of our 191 member countries. We are proposing ways for countries to reduce this footprint and encouraging technology and knowledge transfers,” he said. “As an industry which transports goods and is present across the globe, we have a responsibility with regard to the impact of [postal] activities on climate change and, in a larger sense, the environment.”
“The fight against climate change and this emergency fund perfectly illustrate the reasonableness and the necessity for agencies within the UN system to cooperate and profit from one another’s expertise,” Dayan said.