2,000 people in Marikina Basin benefit from ADB-funded climate change project

DILIMAN, Quezon City, Philippines – About 2,000 people living in the Upper Marikina River Basin have benefited from a project on climate change funded by the Asian Development Bank (ADB).

The three-year project, dubbed “ADB TA-81111 PH: Climate Resilience and Green Growth in the Upper Marikina River Basin Protected Landscape (UMBRPL): Demonstrating the Eco-town Framework,” covered Antipolo City and the Rizal towns of Tanay, San Mateo, Rodriguez and Baras.

In the conduct of the three-year project, ADB commissioned the Philippine government-hosted Southeast Asian Regional Center for Graduate Study and Research in Agriculture (SEARCA) in close collaboration with the Commission on Climate Change (CCC), the project's implementing agency; and ERGONS Project Marketing Consultants, an associate in the project; and with the participation of the five local government units (LGUs).

SEARCA, based in the University of Philippines Los Baños (UPLB), is one of 21 regional centers of the Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organization (SEAMEO), an inter-government treaty body founded in 1965 to foster cooperation in education, science, and culture among Southeast Asian nations.

The project's results and impacts were presented at the “Wrap-up and Project Review Workshop” held last Sept. 29 at the SEAMEO-Regional Center for Educational Innovation and Technology (INNOTECH) in Diliman. INNOTECH, headed by Director Ramon Bacani, a former education undersecretary, is a SEARCA sister center.

SEARCA director Gil Saguiguit Jr. said the project had four components, namely: collection of baseline information and assessment of vulnerability to climate change; identification, analysis, and prioritization of locally appropriate adaptation and mitigation measures; selection of pilot demonstration areas and implementation of gender-equitable adaptation and mitigation measures; and development of knowledge products and strengthening of stakeholder capacity.

In the course of the three-year project, he said, SEARCA through its team of experts had gone through the eco-town process espoused by the CCC, which include establishing baseline information; geographic information system (GIS) mapping; and sector vulnerability assessment covering agriculture, water, health, forest, and roads and bridges; and natural resource accounting.

All this, Saguiguit said, is geared toward developing the Eco-town Climate Resilience and Green Growth Road Map in the UMRBPL, considered one of the most important watersheds in the Philippines.

ADB principal climate change specialist Ancha Srinivasan  said green growth and resilience measures piloted by the project included bio-charcoal briquetting for the five LGU beneficiaries; check dams in Antipolo City and San Mateo; and pioneering species establishment and rehabilitation in Tanay, Rodriguez, and Baras.

Srinivasan added: “This is not to say that these are the only measures that could be implemented, but within the time and budget constraints, these are just the pilot demonstration activities. If we can identify adaptation and mitigation measures, there is funding from international sources.“

Project team leader Elmer Mercado also cited as among the project's most tangible outputs the baseline information and maps on climate change impacts, as well as tool kits and quick guides on conducting green house gas inventory, vulnerability assessments, benefit-cost analysis and GIS for local governance.

“Our hope,” concluded Saguiguit, “is that our LGUs will be able to use and maximize the results of this project in updating their respective Comprehensive Land Use Plan and in preparing local climate change action plan.”