Arroyo signs climate change framework

PUERTO PRINCESA CITY, Palawan, Philippines — President Macapagal-Arroyo signed Wednesday the National Framework on Climate Change, a complementary policy document to the newly enacted Climate Change Law (RA 9729), which provides the overarching policy directions on how the Philippines will cope with global warming and climate change.

The climate change framework, a result of a series of nationwide consultations conducted by the inter-agency Commission on Climate Change (CCC), focused heavily on measures aimed at ensuring the country’s food security under a scenario where increased incidence of drought and natural disasters will impact on the economy, and on disaster management.

“I’m happy to have completed this framework here in Palawan,” President Arroyo told reporters following a closed-door meeting of the commission at the Asturias Hotel.

As mandated by the law, within one year, the commission will come up with a national action plan, which details specific interventions on how the country will soften the impact of global warming on sensitive sectors such as agriculture and fisheries while at the same time, improving its capability to manage natural disasters such as super typhoons and droughts.

Civil society groups, which had lobbied actively on formulating the draft of the policy framework, said they were pleased with the final outcome, which focused on the “two main pillars which are mitigation and adaptation.”

“The challenge now before us is to localize this framework into action plans and specific strategies of local government units within a year from now,” Naderev Saño, a member of the commission and an official of the World Wildlife Fund-Philippines, told the Philippine Daily Inquirer.

Former environment and natural resources secretary Heherson Alvarez said they were looking at a first year implementation budget of around $5 billion to implement the government’s action plans.

He said some of the mitigation measures would include improving early warning systems for typhoons and natural disasters and the acquisition of technologies such as state-of-the-art radar systems.

“In the first year, we will need somewhere in the ballpark of $5 billion, just to put our preparedness programs in place,” Alvarez told the Inquirer.

Saño said they were looking into lobbying the United Nations to force developed countries to prioritize funding for “adaptation and mitigation” by poorer and developing nations.

“The understanding is that we also will maximize government resources and intensify mobilization of resources from the international community. We will negotiate under the UN Convention for Climate Change so that industrialized countries should prioritize providing financing for adaptation by developing countries,” Saño said.

Scientific studies have identified the Philippines as among the countries susceptible to the effects of global warming, with incidence of sea-level rises, heating of the ocean temperatures, and more frequent and intense tropical storms and typhoons.

“Two more degrees in the change of temperature and we will see the corals of Tubbataha turn into white and die,” WWF-Philippines president Lorenzo Tan told President Arroyo and the members of the commission in a presentation.

The Tubbataha Reefs, located in the middle of the Sulu Sea in the western flank of Palawan, is the country’s only marine park included in the list of the United Nations as a world heritage site.

Tan pointed out that in Bohol, rising sea levels had already submerged four islands and that the local government had been forced to relocate their inhabitants.

Commission members said the national framework on climate change should nudge the government into rethinking some of its development policies that impact on climate change, such as its active promotion of mining investments.

“Mining will now have to be subsumed on how we regard the overall issues about the dangers of global warming. If we do not address the climate change issue, we will reach the tipping point,” Alvarez said.

“When we go down to the countryside to do the action plan, we will address these issues. For the first time, we are challenged by a danger to our existence. We will make the appropriate recommendations and measures,” he further said.

“Of course, this will entail rethinking of our traditional way of pursuing development, including our policy towards mining,” Saño added. –Redempto Anda, Inquirer Southern Luzon