Senator Loren Legarda today championed her proposal for a water security program to boost agricultural productivity amidst the heat wave brought by El Niño.

“The crop damages caused by El Niño has now reached Php8.4 billion, and with the heat wave expected to last until June or July of this year, we’ve got to step up our campaign to irrigate our farmlands, otherwise we will be seeing another round of food price hikes and an increase in hungry Filipinos,” warned Legarda.

“Already, four million filipino families, or 22 percent of the entire population have experienced involuntary hunger for the last three months. This is almost ten percent above the 13.8% average hunger rate for the past decade (1998-2010). It only shows that climate change is a gut issue, and that the extreme weather patterns we now experience not only wreaks disasters such as floods and earthquakes, but goes into the issue of providing healthy food in the table of every Filipino household,” Legarda said.

“First, we have to develop our capability to use alternative sources of water. We’ve been exhausting our surface water, and it’s no longer enough to meet our needs. For instance, we have an average annual rainfall of 2,440mm but we only use around 28% of this,” said Legarda.

“The Filipino youth hope that Earth Day 2010 can be a turning point to advance climate policy, energy efficiency, renewable energy and green jobs,” said Esperanza Garcia, who heads PYCM and was the youth delegate to the Copenhagen summit.

Legarda’s Luntiang Pilipinas and PYCM partner to join more than one billion people in 190 countries that are taking action for Earth Day.