The Environment Report

THIS IS A REACTION TO THE NEWS item “Arroyo signs climate change law.” (Inquirer, 10/24/09)

While Republic Act 9729 may finally settle the confounding question of which government agency or official should take the lead in and be accountable for the efforts to address climate change in the Philippines, the urgent problem that must be resolved is much more fundamental.

No amount of institutional measures can effectively enhance the country’s climate resiliency if the current state of governance remains rotten to the core. The country will find it very difficult to respond to climate change and its impacts if the national government siphons off large amounts of disaster relief, rehabilitation and infrastructure funds for the benefit of corrupt or inept officials while aggressively implementing such policies as mining liberalization and energy deregulation. We have conflicting laws and policies, not just overlapping climate change bodies.

Communities dependent on our rich forest, marine, agricultural and freshwater ecosystems will find it harder to cope with more extreme weather events if our fragile environment is further damaged by wanton mining, logging, resource extraction and pollution. The Arroyo administration’s program of selling our country’s natural resources to foreign investors contradicts the aim to build an enabling environment for climate adaptation by grassroots communities.

The genuine solution to building a climate-resilient nation lies in a foundation of good governance, national sovereignty and genuine development for the people. The people’s capacity to adapt to climate change rests in great measures that address poverty and social justice issues, such as being accorded the right to land, resources and jobs, to say the least.

We call on the newly-formed Climate Change Commission to make real its promise to address the climate problems we face. We challenge it to realign its planned adaptation and mitigation strategies with the Filipino people’s long-standing call for genuine land reform and national industrialization, just jobs and wages and labor laws.

—FRANCES QUIMPO,

executive director,

Center for Environmental

Concerns-Philippines

26 Matulungin St.,

Barangay Central,

Diliman, Quezon City