15 action points in dealing with climate change

If we live, do business, and work in low-lying areas, let us go upland if there is a typhoon. If we are located along coastal areas, near bodies of water, and in a vicinity where there is no effective development design to deal with fast-rising waters and flooding recedes painfully slow, let us not think twice about evacuating. The call is to survive.

Our children of this generation will witness or even experience more flooding and heavy rainfall in disaster-prone regions like Bicol if the situation is not reversed. This is not to scare the wits out of everyone. It is the reality that we need to face head-on today. Scientists sounded an alarm more than five decades ago. Thirty years ago, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change was adopted to show that climate change is a global problem that requires not just action, but international cooperation. Climate change will be one of the biggest foreign policy challenges worldwide, underscoring the need for global unity in tackling this issue.

According to a new study, extreme weather events globally, like typhoons, floods, and heat waves, have already collectively cost the governments an estimated $2.8 trillion or PhP 100 trillion. Per hour, that is around $16.3 million. It includes the cost of infrastructure, property, agriculture, and health damage. It will increase over time as the impacts of climate change become more severe. The poorest countries in the world, like the Philippines, are at the most significant risk of the economic effects of climate change.

It is time to educate ourselves about climate change, extreme temperatures, and weather patterns caused by destructive activities like burning fossil fuels like coal, oil, and gas. It is now part of our lives. In the last 30 years, CO2 emissions have increased by 60 percent worldwide, resulting in global warming. Can we still do something to mitigate or eliminate the dangers of climate change to our lives and property? Policy change and action plans for DRRM or disaster risk and reduction that engage the communities into unified actions are critical problem solvers.

On November 26, the Regional Plan Advocacy Committee of the Regional Development Council will conduct its Plan Advocacy Assessment cum Knowledge Sharing Session, as a way to share knowledge.  Ahead of the meeting, I would like to present the following action proposals:

Let us have Sarong Bankang Marinero sa kada Barangay at Munisipyo for rescue and livelihood use when at peacetime, that is, no distress; 2) Training and awareness building of daily use of a weather tracker like windy.com, Jumong the Great, or of Michael Padua’s Typhoon 2000 to help prepare for the coming of a storm or weather disturbance; 3) Use of digital mapping that work with the atlases of the cities that will show where heavy rainfall would come, where they will flow, which areas are most or more vulnerable, and what areas need to be protected, prioritized for rescue or emergency; 4) All LGUs should have emergency plans ready, regularly updated and disseminated among the populace of their communities with a guide on what to do, where to go and what to prepare before the storm comes. 5) Build more second-floor homes, and even third-floor homes to be more “laging handa” like the Boy Scout motto adopted by every family and part of everyone’s mindset;  6) Thorough dredging of clogged floorings and tributaries like the Bicol River around the province and setting up of EWS (Early Warning System);  7) Climate change and climate adaptation should be integrated into education from elementary, in business, in everything we do to live and survive; 8) For the LGU, prepare for simple Indigenous water diverting, build up fortresses like sandbags, storing water, etc. 9)  Everyone - NGOs, the public sector, business, and the church, -  to help anew of ways and projects of storing excess waters during rainfall. Setting up of water harvester or building a cistern waterproof receptacle for holding waters to catch and store rainwater; 10) Before LGUs approve any construction or area development program at the national or local level, make it mandatory for investors to submit a good drainage plan; 11) Plant and reforest around communities with the use of  technology to capture carbon and store it; 12) Plastics are a no-no, use only environment-friendly biobased, biodegradable and compostable packaging; 13) Institutionalize mechanisms and pass a law to build and develop sustainable social enterprises that work toward poverty reduction and economic resilience of the communities with a disaster mitigation program as a key component; 14) Put a stop to massive land conversions from agricultural lands to heavy commercialized infra; 15) Ensure participatory governance and people-centered planning when DRRM is concerned.

We can learn from other countries: China’s achievements in green and low-carbon development, while actively contributing to global actions against climate change, green and low-carbon growth, clean air, and clean product production is an excellent example to emulate. Renewable energy -solar, wind power, and photovoltaic product exports- helped other countries reduce carbon dioxide emissions. It has signed the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change and pledged to be carbon neutral by 2060. America, the world’s largest emitter, should follow suit.

In Denmark and Scotland, renewable energy, such as solar power, onshore wind, hydro, and offshore wind, has made a dent. These countries now focus on achieving zero greenhouse emissions by planting trees incessantly and using technology to capture and store carbon. When world leaders gathered in Glasgow in 2023 for the COP26 climate change summit, they realized that climate change is a life-and-death challenge that requires urgent, unified, and decisive global action. It is a positive development.