# 4 Moral imperatives

Having identified the many beneficial outcomes (particularly for developing countries) that can be delivered through the cascading forecasting approach at relatively low cost, WMO et al (2013) highlighted three critical factors needed to ensure sustainability:

1. GPCs are able to support the provision of relevant products on a long-term operational basis;

2. RSMCs are able to maintain an interpretation and guidance service on a similar long-term operational basis; and 3. regular capacity building and training can be maintained for new forecasters along with refresher training for experienced forecasters.

It has been highlighted that all three areas require investment, whether through domestic or international financing. In line with the global NWP focus of this research, we here further explore the social and ethical demand for global investment in ensuring GPC product delivery to LICs.

It would be difficult to justify the responsibility of higher income countries to ensure the delivery of the full suite of weather and climate forecasting data to LICs as a "public service" without discussing the ethics behind it. However, the subject of ethics tends to make many stakeholders uncomfortable. After all, is not everyone in the world entitled to the greatest “pursuit of happiness”? And aren’t developed countries who claim to be moral ascendants of modern civilization responsible for sharing information that could benefit the greatest number of people?

These questions are of course debated in many contexts, but the emphasis on ethical principles is nonetheless important when dealing with a service that provides such a significant global value. Additionally, as demonstrated in Section 5 on financing, many social issues that currently necessitate development aid can benefit from improved weather and climate forecasting. The justification behind providing the full suite of weather and climate information should therefore go beyond merely comparing costs with benefits, or identifying feasible or sustainable sources of funding for these services.

In the next 15 years, the services provided by weather and climate services will play an ever increasing role, with GDP projected to double and a billion more people moving to cities (New Climate Economy 2014). Furthermore, the increasing impacts of climate change will have severe consequences on the more fragile economies of the world. This section aims to broaden the scope of reasons for improving the global weather and climate services available to the LICs by looking from an ethical perspective and addressing the public good imperative that could guide policy. Firstly, this section makes an argument in favor of GPCs’ free provision of weather and climate forecasting using the utilitarian principle. Secondly, it considers the full suite of forecasting information and more broadly open data as an integral part of the global development process that should originate in countries that already possess the capacity, namely higher income countries.

## 4.1 Utilitarianism

Utilitarianism is a ubiquitous principle which can be interpreted as the greatest good for the greatest number of people (Bentham 1775). From the perspective of utilitarianism, the purpose of weather and climate information should therefore be to increase welfare and security, support economic development, and respond to pending weather, climate and water threats. Together, these can provide 18