Arrested development: Climate change readiness in the Philippines

Concluded from yesterday

A little more than 10 years ago, it was the Philippines that led 133 other nations in acknowledging the threat of this global phenomenon.

In 1995, long before the issue was internationally fashionable, the Philippines hosted the First Asia-Pacific Leaders’ Conference on Climate Change. In the same conference—more than a decade before Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” became a worldwide sensation—representatives from 133 countries signed the Manila Declaration, which among others, acknowledged dangers posed by climate change phenomenon to archipelagic nations such as the Philippines. “Small island states, coastal, and other nations of the Asia Pacific region, including the many centers of economic, biological, and cultural viability and diversity, are extremely susceptible to climate change and sea level rise,” said the declaration.

It was further agreed then that “local governments and communities (are encouraged to) establish policies and programs to respond to climate change.

Former senator and Climate Change Commissioner Heherson Alvarez, who was then convening chairman for the ASPAC-LCCC, recalls that the Philippines has consistently lobbied for “deep and early cuts” in carbon emissions, specifically among developed nations.

But while the country has been widely viewed as a leader in the battle against climate change—maintaining a “30-percent deep and early emission cut from developed countries”—back home, events of the last decade have revealed both the nation’s vulnerabilities and its lack of inability to cope with them.

In 2006, the World Health Organizations reported that “a series of destructive typhoons hit the Philippines during the last quarter of 2006 causing widespread loss of lives, injuries and extensive damage to property. These were named Cimaron, Xangsane, Durian and Utor (local codenames: Paeng, Milenyo, Reming and Seniang, respectively). The total death toll from these typhoons reached more than 1000 persons and the number of injured were 3163.”

Milenyo directly hit Metro Manila— the country’s center of government and commerce where disaster preparedness should be at its operational best—killing at least 18 people, closing offices and financial markets, damaging property, and causing a Luzon-wide power outage.

In 2009, Ondoy (Ketsana) came depositing 455 millimeters (17.9 inches) of rain on Metro Manila in all but 24 hours —the most amount of rainfall in 42 years. Again, the WHO reported, “the storm flooded Manila, along with villages and roads. More than 435,000 persons are known to have been affected, with some 116,000 taking shelter in evacuation centres. Known casualties include 86 dead, 32 missing and 5 injured, while more than 7,000 persons were rescued. “

After Ondoy, Pepeng (Parma) devastated norther Luzon in October, inundating more than 70 percent of Pangasinan province and causing flash floods in various other provinces. The National Disaster Coordinating Council estimated P7.172 billion-worth of damage to agriculture and infrastructure, and 544 casualties including 311 fatalities.

In the same year, immediately after Pepeng and 14 years after the “Manila Declaration,” then President and now Rep. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo signed Republic Act (RA) 9729, otherwise known as the Philippine Climate Change Act of 2009, into law.

The law recognized the urgent need for a “Framework Strategy” and “National Climate Change Action Plan” that would harmonize all programs involving climate change adaptation and mitigation, which it defined as:

“Adaptation refers to the adjustment in natural or human systems in response to actual or expected climatic stimuli or their effects, which moderates harm or exploits beneficial opportunities…

Mitigation in the context of climate change, refers to human intervention to address anthropogenic emissions by sources and removals by sinks of all GHG, including ozone- depleting substances and their substitutes.”

Simply put, “adaptation” refers to the plans and programs that would increase the country’s readiness to respond to climate change, while “mitigation” refers to those steps that should be taken to delay if not lessen its impact.

The law also provides for the creation of a Climate Change Commission as “the sole policy-making body of the government which shall be tasked to coordinate, monitor and evaluate the programs and action plans of the government relating to climate change,” with the President as its Chairman.

The Climate Change Act provides that both the Framework and the Plan should be completed within a period of two years. The CCC has thus far completed its National Framework Strategy, while the Action Plan is due for completion by April of this year.

Even assuming a completed plan by April (less than a month from today), the information as well as the know-how will have to be cascaded down to all local government units to the smallest barangays.

Meanwhile, communities now flooded in the Visayas, Mindanao, and Bicol regions will have to console themselves with the thought that the “plan” to save them from similar future calamities is just two months away from completion.

The deadline for a plan, as the law says, is in April; the deadline for its implementation, as events stand witness, was yesterday. –Karl Allan Barlaan and Christian Cardiente, MST Newssearch Team