Press Release
September 30, 2008

Climate change an issue that
cannot be taken for granted - Loren

Senator Loren Legarda yesterday said the Philippines must show its seriousness in tackling climate change to mitigate its potential risks which are awesome to contemplate.

"In an ideal world, in the perfect hierarchy of issues that should animate the globe, climate change should be at the top of public policy concerns," Legarda told participants in the National Conference and Training Needs Assessment on Forests and Climate Change held at Crown Plaza Hotel in Ortigas, Pasig City .

"It is an issue larger than national poverty because the brutal manifestations of climate change impoverish not jus communities and countries but the entire planet," she said, citing the Nargis incident in Myanmar wherein its rice deltas have been transformed into vast watery graveyards.

According to Legarda, the country should pay attention to climate change, saying "it is an issue more important than wars and famines, financial meltdowns, the collapse of those iconic houses of finance and the clash of civilizations."

"What is at stake in the climate change discussion is the very survival of peoples across the globe, regardless of race or creed, the survival of the human race itself," she warned.

Legarda, prime advocate of restoring the Philippines' once verdant landscape by batting for the planting of two billion trees under her Luntiang Pilipinas project, was keynote speaker in the event organized by Environmental Leadership and Training Initiative which was a joint program of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute.

Experts agree that the pace of climate change is tremendous; leaving the people, especially those in areas that are more vulnerable to calamity, little time to act. "For what's the sense of discussing growth in a world teetering on extinction?" she asked.

"It is a matter of life-and-death on an epic scale, and sadly, it is not at the top of policy concerns here and elsewhere."

"In our country, as in the rest of the world, policy shits from one headline to another. The crisis of the day, not the terrible scourge of the planet, is the one that gets priority attention, although transient and fleeting," she lamented.

She nevertheless made it clear that the attention to climate change is given attention, as manifested by the proposed bill on climate change now waiting for approval in the senate.

Legarda, the chair of the Senate Sub-Committee on Climate Change, revealed the Committee Report No. 9 entitled An Act Mainstreaming Climate Change in Government Policy Formulations, Creating for this Purpose the Climate Change Commission.

Legarda also effected a symbolic turn-over of seedling from her Luntiang Pilipinas to ELTI and World Agroforestry Center (International Centre for Research in Agroforestry) which was also one of the organizers of yesterday's event aimed at achieving five goals.

Key findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2007, the role of forests in climate change mitigation and recent research were presented during the daylong conference attended by noted speakers, namely Drs. Rex Cruz, Rodel Lasco, Rey Guarin, Ralph Strebel, Prof. Xiaoquan Zhang (Chinese Academy of Forestry), Mai Jian (Program Manager for Climate Change, The nature Conservancy, China).

Dr. Cruz delved on the Contribution of Forestry to Climate Change and Impact of Climate Change on Forests, Dr. Lasco tackled the Mitigation Opportunities and Constraints in CDM and voluntary markets while Guarin discussed Carbon markets from the business perspective.

Guarin is a Senior Emmission Broker, TFS Green, while Strebel is a senior counsel on Carbon Conservation.

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