MACTAN, CEBU—Climate change could destroy the country’s economic gains unless the government, the private sector and non-government organizations intensify their mitigation and adaptation measures, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo warned on Tuesday.

Speaking at the One Visayas Summit on Climate Change here, Ms Arroyo said the Philippines could suffer the brunt of a warming climate even if the country is only a small contributor of greenhouse gas emissions.

“If climate change were to reach its tipping point, Florida may lose some coastlines, but we may lose entire islands,” the President said in her speech at the Imperial Palace Waterpark Resort Hotel here.

“We need not over-stress that climate change is bad for the economy, especially the Visayan economy, whose future is eco-tourism. So we don’t have much time.”

Fortunately, the President said, various solutions have been worked out internationally for the mitigation of climate change, the complex of effects arising from the burning of forests and fossil fuels. She cited the Kyoto Protocol, an international agreement to limit the emission of greenhouse gases, and the United Nations Convention on Climate Change.

On the domestic front, she said the government has been implementing adaptation measures like reforestation and early warning systems against natural disasters, and has passed laws such as the Solid Waste Management Act, the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act as mitigation measures, Ms Arroyo said.

But she stressed the importance for every barangay (village) in the country to set up a material recovery facility (MRF) for the segregation of wastes to comply with the Solid Waste Management Act, and thereby reduce the country’s carbon dioxide emissions.

Environment Secretary Lito Atienza, the head of the task force on solid waste management, has been going around the country with the President to impress upon barangay officials the importance of setting up an MRF.

“The Solid Waste Management Law mandates that every single barangay to have an MRF. That’s not such a tall order,” she said, pointing that an MRF could be as cheap as P200,000 or as costly as P2 million.

“This is something we want every barangay to do,” she added.

Ms Arroyo said the country has also had some success in “carbon trading,” citing the reforestation of a northern part of Sierra Madre by Toyota and the transformation of methane-driven power plants with the use of “carbon credits.”

TJ Burgonio
Philippine Daily Inquirer