Department of Environment and Natural Resources’ Environmental Management Bureau (EMB) aims commencing this year training for its regional office personnel who’ll inventory, in respective areas of jurisdiction, greenhouse gases (GHGs) which experts identified as driving climate change.
EMB Climate Change Office Media Production Specialist Winnie Passe said the inventory can help authorities concerned better generate policies, programs and activities on addressing GHG emissions in their regions.
“The training is also one way to mainstream climate change in EMB,” she continued.
Carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide are among the GHGs experts identified earlier.
Experts already raised urgency for mitigating GHG emissions from human activities, noting increasing atmospheric concentration of these gases is jacking up global temperature.
Such global warming is causing climate change, they noted.
“The inventory can help identify the top GHG contributors in our country,” Passe said.
Earlier, DENR as well as United Nations Development Programme and the Global Environment Fund reported Philippine GHG emissions from the energy and agriculture sectors, industrial processes, waste and LUCF or land use change and forestry.
“Based on inventory conducted for the different sectors, the Philippines emitted 19,491.11 gigagrams of GHG in 2000, net of sequestered carbon by LUCF,” the organizations’ report noted.
The report also pointed out Philippine GHG emissions in 2000 decreased 81 percent from the 1994 level “notably due to increase in amount of emissions sequestered by the LUCF sector.”
Still, government continues promoting adaptation measures also as experts warned the Philippines is vulnerable to several climate change impacts since this country is an archipelago with a prevailing tropical climate.
Climate change’s impacts include onslaught of increasingly violent weather disturbances and sea level rise, they said.
Among disasters linked to such impacts are flooding and landslides. [PNA]
