It is my pleasure to be invited here at the Miriam College, University of Santo Tomas and Cebu Institute of Technology to speak about an issue which has become one of the greatest humanitarian development challenges that we all face.

While climate change has been at the forefront of international discourse for more than two decades now, it was only two years ago that we have reached a clear scientific consensus that climate change is real, it is accelerating and it is largely human-induced.

In 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its fourth assessment report which states that the evidence of climate change is “unequivocal” and that human activities have contributed to the warming.

And we don’t even have to look far into the future to see the signs of a changing climate. It is happening here. It is happening now. More and more, it will bring devastating impacts that cannot be ignored

Unfortunately, it took Ondoy for us to realize that climate change is here and now. More and more, it will bring devastating impacts that cannot be ignored.

Because they will impact on vital life support systems.

Fundamentally, we need to measure the impact of climate change by its social, economic, cultural and humanitarian implications as climate change is not just a scientific and environmental issue, but an all encompassing threat to our basic human rights – food, potable water, shelter, decent livelihood and life itself. And it is this human face of climate change that I would like to bring to your attention.

Climate change threatens our agricultural productivity and food security.

The Philippines is periodically affected by the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) phenomenon that induces prolonged wet and dry seasons. It contracted the nation’s GDP when agricultural production dropped drastically. From 1990 to 2003, the damage due to ENSO-related drought was about 370 million US dollars.

Again, an unconventional dry spell occurred in 2007 caused rice shortages in 2008 which prompted the importation of 2.7 million metric tons of rice, the country’s biggest rice importation in history. Over the past ten years, the Philippines has been importing more than one million metric tons of rice each year.

With climate change, more extreme weather events would further affect agriculture production and food security.

Crop yield potential is estimated to decline by 19% in Asia toward the end of the century and rice yield in the Philippines would decline by 75%.

Climate change threatens our health.

Higher temperatures cause the surge of diseases such as dengue, malaria, cholera and typhoid. Communities that have been displaced by disasters will be most likely to be exposed to health threats in evacuation centers.

A study of the World Health Organization revealed that the most apparent effect of climate change in the country was the sudden increase in dengue, malaria and typhoid fever cases in 1998 when the Philippines experienced the El Niño phenomenon.

In 1998, almost 40,000 dengue cases nationwide, 1,200 cholera cases and nearly 1,000 typhoid fever cases were recorded.

Climate change threatens economic growth.

The poverty assessment conducted by the World Bank in 2001 cited the rise in poverty level to 28 per cent due to the impact of El Nino.

Another A World Bank study in 2004 reported that the economic impact of disasters totaled USD 500 million annually (about 4% of GDP). However, the government reported that economic losses and damages due to disasters dramatically rose to USD 1.6 billion in 2006, borne mostly by the rural areas where poverty is most prevalent.

Based on a recent ADB study on the economics of climate change, the country stands to lose 6% of its GDP annually by 2100 if it disregards climate change risks.

Climate change threatens our right to life.

Such threat is much pronounced in low-lying small island nations such as the Maldives. 80% of said country’s islands are no more than 1 meter above sea level. Vulnerable to sea level rise, the Maldives must seek a new homeland elsewhere as a final adaptation solution. But what happens to the Maldives today might happen to other countries tomorrow.

In the Philippines, a mere one meter rise in sea level is estimated to submerge 129,000 hectares of land in 28 of our 80 provinces.

The record-high rainfall caused by Ondoy left at least 140240 dead, 328 missing and more than a hundred thousand brought to evacuation centers.
According to the Kofi Annan’s Global Humanitarian Forum, climate change is already responsible for 300,000 deaths a year as heatwaves, floods and forest fires become more severe.

Given these far-reaching implications of climate change, it is indeed the greatest humanitarian challenge today.

Its impact is already evident in our daily lives, especially in the lives of vulnerable populations.

We have floods during the harvest season. We have droughts during the planting season. Our farmers are at the mercy of extreme weather shifts. In 2008, Typhoon Frank killed 98 people, Super Typhoon Durian in 2006 caused volcanic mudflows that buried eight villages, displaced thousands of families, and killed hundreds of people in Albay, and in 2006, the Guinsaugon, Leyte landslide tragedy killed more than a thousand people. Apart from these are smaller disasters- the ones that kill less than 10 people and destroy less than 10 houses – which we should also be wary about.

It is clear injustice that the poorest groups bear the brunt of the impacts of climate change with least responsibility for having caused it. 99 percent of the casualties of climate change occur in developing countries but 50 percent of the world’s least developed nations account for less than one percent of greenhouse emissions, which is the main culprit of global warming. Industrialized countries must compensate for this inequality, commit deep cuts in their greenhouse emissions and support adaptation work in vulnerable nations.

In the Philippines, there is much to be done to address the climate crisis. It is crucial that we determine the drivers of our vulnerability to disasters and climate change. The Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction has recently found them with strong empirical evidence.: These are poor urban governance, vulnerable rural livelihoods, and ecosystems decline, which we need to attend to in the most immediate time..

The Report urges us to address these drivers of vulnerability lest climate change increases disaster risks, worsens poverty in developing countries, and makes our Millennium Development Goals even more elusive.

Firstly, we must strengthen governance in the urban centres. This means putting a stop to corruption. This means enforcing strictly building codes and zoning policies. This means not placing people, homesuses, and industries in high risk areas.

Development must be pursued with responsibility, accountability, and proficiency for good governance. Development should reduce rather than produce risks to our society and our economy. Development should promote resilient investments.

Secondly, we must protect our ecosystems because ecosystem services – the services nature provides to sustain human life on earth – are declining, with some services like fisheries beyond repair. And in addition, we are also creating trade-offs between these ecosystem services: for when we convert mangrove plantations to shrimp ponds, we actually increase storm surge risk; for when we cut down forests for agriculture use, we actually increase landslide risk; for when we drain wetlands, we actually increase flood risk.

I note with deep concern the rapid deforestation in our country. Over the last century, the proportion of land area covered by forest has fallen from 22 percent in 1990 to just 19.4 percent in 2000. As recorded, large area of forestlands were already converted to tree plantation, mining and marginal upland agriculture which gave a 1.4 per cent average deforestation rate from 1990 to 2000, the highest among Asian countries.

Luntiang Pilipinas, an organization that I helped organize several years back pursued a noble goal of creating oases of greens in open spaces and public areas. Today, it has planted and grown two million trees nationwide, a modest contribution to the Billion Tree Campaign of UNEP.

And thirdly, we must enhance rural livelihoods which 75% of the poor depend on for their subsistence. One tested strategy is to improve agricultural productivity and support our farmers better. This also means addressing the issues akin to rural poverty – such as inequity in land distribution, lack of access to better seeds and irrigation technology, the lack of economic diversification, weak markets and trade barriers, and the lack of capacity to absorb and to recover from disaster losses.

As I always articulate, there is no more fitting time to say that reducing disaster and climate risk has become a moral imperative for governments and a social responsibility for all than now — when having less in life means losing life.

The present task of addressing climate change has now become synonymous with preserving humanity and securing the future of our children and our grandchildren today. It is therefore a task no one can afford to ignore.

We need to take real action, and we need it now.

On my part and in my capacity as a legislator, I authored and sponsored the “Climate Change Act of 2009”. I am proud to share with you that the measure that will ensure the mainstreaming of climate change in our national development agenda and poverty reduction strategies was passed in Congress and is now just awaiting the President’s signature.is perhaps days away from enactment.

As your staunch partner in our advocacy on climate change, and as the UN Regional Champion for Disaster Risk Reduction, I have been going around the Asian region in the last several months campaigning, not for the 2010 elections, but for the concerted efforts of the international community in combating the threats of climate change and in disaster risk reduction.

Evidently, climate change is not just a scientific phenomenon that only scientists or technical experts understand.

As we gather here, poor Filipinos languish in evacuation camps, bear the whiplash of death and destruction, lose their shanties, farms and the bundles of rags that make up their life’s possession, and pick up the pieces of their shattered lives after every disaster.

The role of the Miriam College, University of Santo Tomas and Cebu Institute of Technology, in our fight against the threats a changing climate is more crucial than ever. I trust that, under a strong partnership, we shall remain committed towards converging science technology and policy to help provide a safer and healthier environment for our people to live in.