Press Release
November 2, 2009

Loren calls for climate change sensitive 2010 budget

As Vice Chair of the Committee on Finance and as Chair of the Committee on Climate Change, Sen. Loren Legarda vows to make sure that the budget for fiscal year 2010 will give utmost priority to addressing the issues of climate change and disaster risk reduction.

"The 1.541-trillion budget for next year was formulated by the Executive Department before the super typhoons hit our country, killed hundreds of our people, destroyed millions worth of properties and infrastructure, and devastated our people's main sources of livelihood," Legarda said.

In the President's budget message, priorities were given to infrastructure, agriculture, education, health, poverty reduction, and good governance. "This is the first time that the Executive Department has given priority to environment and climate change in its budget preparations. But we must make sure that funds for these priority concerns are properly utilized and disbursed."

"Now that the Senate Committee on Finance is finalizing its committee report on the general appropriations bill, we must re-evaluate and recast government priorities so that our agencies and local government units will be better equipped and our people will be better prepared for impending typhoons and calamities that may once again strike our country."

First and foremost, the 2010 GAA must incorporate funding for the implementation of the Climate Change Act which was signed into law on October 23, 2009 long after the President's National Expenditure Program was submitted to Congress. Loren, principal author and sponsor of Republic Act 9729, pushes for the full implementation and funding of the landmark legislation. The new law mandates the development of a framework strategy and local action plans on climate change.

The Climate Change Act provides for the creation of the Commission on Climate Change that will be the sole policy-making body of the government tasked to coordinate, monitor and evaluate the programs and action plans of the government relating to climate change

"We should protect our agricultural and fishery sector by first providing for the identification of the Strategic Agriculture and Fisheries Development Zones or SAFDZs that would delineate the biophysical properties of agri and fisheries areas including climate change adaptabilities of crops, poultry and livestock. The zones will also be the physical planning base for agri and fisheries programs and should be guarded against conversion, destructive activities like excessive quarrying and mining, forest fires, overfishing and other illegal activities in coastal areas. Second , we should enable and empower local government units to determine and prepare for their own disaster mitigation through strong counterparting of funds for agricultural and fisheries activities by correcting the inequity in salaries of local extension workers and devolving the wherewithals of extension that have been kept by the national government since the passage of the Local Government Code. But to strengthen this budgetary provision, we should pass the National Extension Bill before the passage of the GAA. Third, we should allow the farmers to produce the country's buffer stock--especially in times of calamities--and lessen dependence on imported food to enable them to determine and produce for their--and the country's--needs as we enter the liberalization regime in ASEAN. , Fourth, we should provide for the National Agriculture and Fisheries Education System--to ensure that the curriculum in all ladders of education strategically incorporate climate change in lifelong learning. Fifth, we should ensure that the farm-to-market roads are strategically networked in production and marketing routes and are quality-controlled to last typhoons and floods through the preparation of an Agriculture and Fisheries Infrastructure Plan. Sixth, we should identify the Basic Needs Communities in agricultural and fisheries areas to focus on the distinct basic needs intervention for the impoverished producers of our food whether in times of calamities or in between harvests. And seventh, we should ensure that the food our people eat are safe at all times by providing for a strengthened food-safety regulations in the Department of Agriculture (DA). And seventh, we should ensure that the 2010 budget should implement all the provisions of the Agriculture and Fisheries Modernization Act (AFMA) through an adequate monitoring budget. Included in the monitoring is putting in place and implementing a planning-programming-budgeting system for AFMA which I--as chair of the Congressional Oversight Committee on Agriculture and Fisheries--have already asked the DA to follow.

"We should also provide more efficient health services for our people, particularly Hospitals and health facilities that are Safe from Disasters because these are frontline facilities when floods, hurricanes, cyclones, and earthquakes strike. We have learned from bitter experiences in the past that many are adversely impacted because safety measures in hospitals were not integrated in their design, construction and functionality. Provisions for medicines and vaccines should also be allocated for the potential outbreak of diseases like leptospirosis borne by typhoons."

The 2010 GAA should likewise provide for the implementation of environment protection programs that will help our local communities prevent, prepare for and minimize the potential risks they will have to suffer from the same severe weather patterns that we are experiencing now. Loren is keen on finding a budget for green jobs and resilient livelihoods to be able to offer diversified income opportunities to the most vulnerable populations to climate change in the rural areas.

Specifically, Loren wants to develop rural livelihoods through agro-forestry. There is a way to improve the livelihoods of our people in the countryside while at the same time protecting the environment and adapting to climate change.

According to Loren, "unutilized and marginal lands can be planted with trees, such as rubber trees, which can be a source of income for Filipinos. "

"If there's one important lesson that we must learn from the super typhoons that ravaged not only our countryside, but Metro Manila as well, it is that the government, both at the national and local levels, must draw up preventive measures so that our people and our communities will remain safe and protected."

"The 2010 budget must not be maintenance budget. Waking up from the country's vulnerability to disasters and climate change, next year's budget must be instrumental in financing our climate change work to save lives and livelihoods. The 2010 budget will reveal if our leaders and decision-makers in the government have learned to finally mainstream climate change in the budgeting process. "

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