Three groups and an expert raised urgency for further government action on climate change’s projected worsening impacts nationwide, noting much still to be done to protect life, limb and property.
Such action include operationalizing the People’s Survival Fund (PSF), incorporating disaster risk reduction (DRR) and climate change adaptation (CCA) into disaster-stricken areas’ rehabilitation plans as well as integrating climate change mitigation and adaptation measures.
“One thing is certain: climate change is here and a morecoordinated approach to this matter is needed to ensure communities’ resilience,” advocacy network Aksyon Klima Pilipinas’ National Coordinator Voltaire Alferez said Friday (April 4) in Metro Manila during a briefing on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 5th assessment report covering impacts on, vulnerability andadaptation to climate change.
IPCC is the international body for assessing the science related to climate change.
Alferez said assessment of government’s action so far show need for improving climate financing, boosting technology development and transfer, mainstreaming the National Climate Change Action Plan, integrating CCA measures into national and local plans as well asNational Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council’s coordination on CCA and DRR.
Government must prioritize renewable energy development and formulate its strategy to reduce emission of climate change-driving greenhouse gasses, he continued.
Aksyon Klima, environment watchdog Greenpeace Southest Asia and development organization Oxfam International urged action, noting the IPCC report released this month cites a “grim” climate forecast for Southeast Asian nations that include the Philippines.
According to Dr. Lourdes Tibig, one of the report’s lead authors, among key findings of the assessment is decades-long changes in climate caused impacts on natural and human systems across all continents and oceans.
“The evidence for such impacts is strongest and most comprehensive in natural systems,” she said at the briefing.
She also said the report confirms human influence in climate change at present.
Key risks listed in the report include those for death, injury, ill health and disrupted livelihood in coastal areas due to storm surges, flooding and sea level rise, Tibig noted.
The risks likewise cover food insecurity from weather extremes and flooding, mortality and morbidity due to extreme heat as well as biodiversity loss, she said.
Experts earlier cited sea level rise, temperature increase and onslaught of weather extremes as among repercussions of climate change.
RA 10174 established PSF in 2012 and provides PhP1 billion as this fund’s opening balance under the General Appropriations Act to finance adaptation programs and projects nationwide. [PNA]
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