Official outlines challenges for innovative climate change adaptation financing

MANILA, Oct. 26 (PNA) ?- A Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) official is urging all sectors to think out of the box and come up with new schemes for financing climate change adaptation (CCA) nationwide.

?We need innovation in financing,? DENR Undersecretary Ramon Paje said during the three-day Second National Conference on CCA which the agency, Albay provincial government, the German government as well as various organizations and public offices commenced Monday in Manila.

He believes innovation is critical in facilitating CCA, which involves adjusting natural or human systems in response to actual or expected climatic stimuli, particularly as authorities noted the country is already experiencing climate change?s repercussions like onslaught of increasingly violent weather disturbances.

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change lead coordinating author Dr. Rodel Lasco also pointed to the urgency of generating needed resources, reporting CCA between 2010 and 2050 will likely cost developing countries around USD75-billion to USD90-billion annually.

?Gross cost will be highest in the Asia-Pacific region where the Philippines is,? he told the conference participants.

Unless the Philippines adapts successfully to climate change, Paje projects poverty incidence nationwide to worsen.

Environmentalist Sen. Loren Legarda is backing CCA, noting about 75 percent of rural people living below the USD1.25 per day international poverty line are vulnerable to weather fluctuations and hazards.

?They have little or no surplus capacity to absorb loses,? she said at the event.

She raised this point while warning climate change is turbo-charging smaller-scale disasters and this helps diminish capital for the poor.

Adaptation and mitigation are the two strategies government identified in its newly enacted Republic Act 9729, the Climate Change Act of 2009, to address the climate change issue.

Mitigation involves human interventions to lower emission of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases (GHG) which experts already identified as accumulating in the atmosphere and trapping heat there, causing global warming leading to climate change.

To help generate resources for CCA, Paje is recommending that power plant owners pay for rehabilitating watersheds where these draw water used in electricity production.

He rationalized this proposal by pointing out power plants can?t produce electricity if watersheds run out of water.

The River Basin Control Office earlier said environmental degradation, soil erosion and implementation of incongruent land uses are among factors destroying the country?s watersheds.

Paje also said authorities must invest in forests part of financial gains from such eco-systems so these can be preserved better and sustainably used more for future generations.

Presidential Adviser on Global Warming and Climate Change Sec. Heherson Alvarez is backing calls to protect forests and to replant denuded areas.

?Our forests can absorb some 20 percent of the Philippines? carbon dioxide emission,? he said.

As head of the country?s delegation to international negotiations for a new climate deal that will succeed the Kyoto Protocol, he is urging developed nations to institute ?deep and early cuts? in respective GHG emissions.

This will help avert ?runaway climate change? that will otherwise ensue if global temperature rises by an additional two degrees due to continuous increase in GHG emissions, he said.

?The problem will be unmanageable if carbon dioxide emission, its first cause, isn?t diminished,? he said at the conference.

Alvarez is supporting CCA?s implementation and said climate change is triggering onslaught of more violent weather disturbances.

He recalled such disturbances were uncommon just 40 years ago.

?We need to adapt,? he said.

Albay Gov. Joey Salceda expects best CCA practices to be identified during the conference which carries the theme ?Moving Forward on Albay Declaration 2007.?

He said these practices will serve as input for establishing the Philippine Strategic Framework on CCA.

In 2007, typhoon-weary Albay under his helm hosted the conference?s initial staging to explore options on addressing potential impact of climate change and its policy implications for local government units.

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