Global alliance vs climate change to be formed

MANILA, Philippines - Political parties from Asia Pacific, Latin America and the Middle East are set to form a global alliance to help combat climate change.

The International Conference of Asian Political Parties and the Centrist Asia-Pacific Democrats International (CAPDI) along with the COPPPAL, the Latin American and Caribbean conference of political parties, will create the Global Parties Ecological Alliance in the next two months in New York.

In the recently concluded CAPDI assembly in Makassar, Indonesia, CAPDI president and former House speaker Jose de Venecia Jr. urged political leaders to ensure that environmental protection is embodied in public policies.

“I’m putting them together to create the largest NGO in a battle against climate change,” De Venecia said.

De Venecia said CAPDI also partnered with the International Ecological Safety Collaborative Organization (IESCO), one of the leading environmental NGOs, to promote the virtues of “governing green” in Asian governments, political parties and civil society.

“In recent years and months, we’ve all seen enough of disasters and calamities wrought by a wounded nature to accept that climate change is real. Climate change is not the problem of tomorrow or the day after. Climate change is today, it is the grave, frightening danger today,” he said.

Citing a United Nations’ report, De Venecia said the cost of damage brought by natural disasters in the first 13 years of this century was estimated at $2.5 trillion.

“We will speak with one voice. We will have a battlecry because now they have different stand on the issue. Qatar’s stand is different from the Kyoto protocol, America as well as China. All they did was to extend talks,” De Venecia said in Filipino.

“The Global Ecological Alliance will promote the beginnings of a united front against environment degradation,” he added.

Meanwhile, the Climate Change Commission (CCC) will celebrate today the International Arts Education Week in coordination with the Philippine Center of the International Theater Institute (ITI).

A ceremony honoring Filipino artists will be held at 2 p.m. at the Mabini Building inside Malacañang grounds.

The Lampara ng Kultura at Sining (Light of Culture and Arts) Awards will be given to individuals, groups and corporations that have helped spread Philippine culture and arts here and abroad and enhanced the national quest for peace, unity and sustainable development.

The awardees include Lea Salonga, Nora Aunor, Lisa Macuja, Monique Wilson, Juvenal Sanso, Alberto Florentino, Danny Dolor, George Yang, Boy Abunda, and Rosalinda Orosa.

A Lifetime service award for art patronage linked to cultural diplomacy will be given to Don Emilio Yap and Frank Rivera.

Corporate awardees include the AIR 21, PLDT-SMART, SM group of companies, Metrobank, Chowking, San Mig Coffee and Tesoro’s.

An international citation will be given to Duk Hyung Yoo, Korea’s theatre designer-director and chairman of the Seoul Institute of the Arts.

The ITI- Earthsavers, honored twice by the UNESCO as Artists for Peace and UNESCO DREAM Center, is an active supporter of the CCC in spreading its goals and programs through theater arts and media.

The ITI- Earthsavers has helped the CCC in initiating the “Tri-Continental South-South dialogue on Defying Disasters,” a public-private partnership among countries such as the Philippines, Colombia and Kenya, during the Rio+20 Conference on Sustainable Development in Brazil in 2012.                           – With Michael Punongbayan