WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo joins global leaders at the World Economic Forum's Annual Meeting 2026 to make the case for greater investments to protect the world's forecasting backbone and to leverage weather, climate and water intelligence for global economic benefits.
In Davos, Celeste Saulo will participate in high-level panels on AI-driven innovation for weather forecasts and early warnings, closing gaps in basic observations, enhancing food security and sustainable development, and increasing collaboration on wildfires and extreme heat. She will join targeted events with investors and philanthropies to forge new partnerships and strengthen existing ones.
The theme of the World Economic Forum meeting is "A Spirit of Dialogue."
"Every forecast, every risk model, every insurance decision, every supply-chain adjustment, every climate-related investment depends on a shared global backbone: observations, data exchange, and standards coordinated across borders, politics, and markets," points out Celeste Saulo.
For the past 75 years, WMO has provided that backbone, but it now faces increasing stress. Data gaps are widening. Critical infrastructure is aging. There is a risk of erosion of multilateral trust. And all at a time when it is most needed.
Climate risks are accelerating. Artificial intelligence is transforming how decisions are made. Markets, insurers, humanitarian systems, and governments now depend on climate intelligence at an unprecedented scale and speed.
Celeste Saulo will champion the WMO Commons - a new financing initiative to safeguard the critical weather forecasting backbone, which underpins trillions of dollars in economic value and supports global security. She will argue the case for greater engagement and investment in knowledge, trust, and the systems that keep the world prepared and protected.
The World Economic Forum's flagship annual Global Risks Report underlines the need.
Environmental-related risks - extreme weather, biodiversity loss, and critical change to Earth systems - are the top three long-term risks over the ten-year- period, according to the report. It draws on the views of over 1,300 global leaders, of whom three-quarters expect a turbulent or stormy environmental outlook, the most negative of any category.
However, geoeconomic confrontation tops the near-term rankings - reflecting the growing strains on the established international order, it say.
"That is the paradox of our era: at a time when we need international cooperation the most, we seem to be the least inclined to use it and invest in it," said UN Secretary-General António Guterres in a speech to the UN General Assembly on 15 January .
"Climate change is a risk multiplier, fuelling tensions over land, water, and food, driving people from their homes, and undermining the ecosystems on which we all depend," he said.
"Leaders have failed to keep warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius. A temporary overshoot of this threshold is now inevitable - but not irreversible. Our mission is to make that overshoot as small, as brief, and as safe as possible - and to bend the curve immediately back towards 1.5 degrees," said Mr Guterres.
The year 2025 was among the top three on record, and the past 11 years have been the 11 warmest on record, according to WMO.
