The committee on environment and natural resources of the Davao City Council will combine disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation in one ordinance.
Councilor Marissa Abella, chairperson of the committee, claimed the city will be the first local government unit (LGU) that will have an ordinance combining disaster risk reduction and management, and climate change adaptation once the proposed ordinance is approved.
A proposed ordinance on disaster risk reduction and management already passed in the first reading last year, she said, and while it is being scheduled for committee hearings, the climate change adaptation measures will be incorporated in the ordinance.
One of the advantages in combining the two concerns is that climate change adaptation will get a share of the funding for disaster risk reduction and management that will be allotted from the city’s calamity fund, Abella added.
She said the councilors have yet to attend a lecture on such environmental issues that will be given by advocates from the Manila Observatory, and LGU of Albay, Bicol, which has successfully practiced disaster risk reduction.
Concerned groups actively advocating against air pollution said Monday the city needs a climate change ordinance that will address not only air pollution but also waste water and solid waste.
Engineer Eddie Fuentes, president of the Association of Pollution Control Officers in Mindanao, Inc., said the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) will implement its climate change program here after a local legislation.
He said the USAID, which created the Clean Cities Davao Coalition – composed of transport groups, academe and all other sectors – to support the enactment of Republic Act No. 9367 or the Biofuels Act of 2006, shifted its campaign to climate change.
Vir Sangutan, of the Clean Cities Davao Coalition, said former councilor Leo Avila proposed a climate change ordinance, which had not been enacted as his term ended.
Avila said in a text message it was a joint proposal with Councilor Peter Laviña to create a Climate Change Office that will coordinate all related activities and policies, and indeed, his term ended before it was enacted. [Lorie Ann A. Cascaro / MindaNews]
