Report of the High-level Round Table of the Open Consultative Platform

A High-Level Round Table for the Launch of the Open Consultative Platform (OCP) was held on 5 and 6 June 2019 at Palexpo, Geneva, in parallel with the Meteorological Technology World Expo 2019 and the Eighteenth World Meteorological Congress. Forty-two executive officials, scientists, and experts from partner organizations, National Meteorological and Hydrological Services, industry, academia and learned societies participated in the Round Table (The list of speakers is in Appendix 1).

The round-table event was opened by Professor Petteri Taalas, WMO Secretary-General, on Wednesday, 5 June 2019, at 1 p.m. In his opening remarks, he advised on the deliberation at the Eighteenth Congress to adopt a new Geneva Declaration 2019: “Building Community for Weather, Climate and Water Actions”. The declaration provides a clear policy statement for partnerships and engagement of all sectors, and the OCP would create a leading mechanism to underpin the relevant WMO processes and furthermore to stimulate the collective and harmonized dialogue among those who wish to contribute from all sectors. Professor Taalas highlighted the WMO proposition to use its strong convening power to facilitate the dialogue between the various stakeholders that would lead to concrete actions, including: better engagement of private sector and academia expertise in the new WMO technical commissions; convening global and regional events on the grand challenges, e.g., a Global Data Conference in 2020, which would be open to all sectors and stakeholders; organizing regular Regional Conferences where again the private sector would be welcome. He concluded that to shape better all these plans, there is a need for a sustainable consultative mechanism where all players can raise issues and build consensus-based recommendations on identified challenges, which was the main idea behind the OCP.