Sen. Loren Legarda: On climate change

I’m proud of our fellow Cebuanos who have donated so generously in cash or in kind for the victims of tropical storm “Ondoy” and The Philippine STAR featured a front-page story on how the employees of the Aboitiz Group of Companies have gone on extra time to help repack those relief goods so they can be safely delivered to those who need them most. My good friend, chief reputation officer (CRO) of Aboitiz, Basti Lascon, summarized their effort in one message: “This is our way of showing concern. We may be in Cebu, but we’re very concerned with what is happening with our fellow Filipinos in Manila.” Indeed, we are concerned about the plight of the flood victims.

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Though I was nursing a slight fever, I had a great time having Sen. Loren Legarda as guest on my talkshow “Straight from the Sky” as we discussed a very relevant topic… global warming and climate change. She just came from a speaking engagement at the Cebu Institute of Technology (CIT) and later spoke before students at the University of Cebu on the urgent need to “measure the impact of climate change by its social, economic, cultural and humanitarian implications.”

We’ve already written in detail the various reasons why the floods in Metro Manila are receding very slowly and part of this is the fact that the boundaries of Laguna Lake have shrunk because of mindless and reckless reclamation of land for housing development. Worse of all are the tons of garbage that have clogged the esteros and waterways of Metro Manila, virtually stopping the floodwaters from flowing back into the sea.

Sen. Legarda has a very important message when she said, “With climate change, more extreme weather events would further affect agriculture production and food security. Crop yield potential is estimated to decline by 19 percent in Asia toward the end of the century and rice yields in the Philippines would decline by 75 percent.” Frankly speaking, we’ve concentrated so much on why Metro Manila was flooded and the dire results of that flooding. But yes, I didn’t realize until Sen. Legarda pointed out that we may face severe food shortages if the palay crops in Central Luzon would get flooded and soiled.

While I’m writing this piece, I already got a lot of text messages from my friends in Manila that the strong rains have returned due to super typhoon “Pepeng” and this only brings bad news especially for people in low areas that are still flooded. At this point, we can only turn to God that his Divine Mercy would spare our country from more suffering.

But we just can’t wallow in our misery… we must do something drastic and for the short term, come up with more rubber boats that are placed in strategic areas. More importantly, the National Disaster Coordinating Council (NDCC) must set up evacuation places also in strategic areas and as requested by Sen. Legarda, for Budget Secretary Andaya to release the budget for more portable toilets. In this country, our schools have become our instant evacuation centers, yet with a thousand families housed in a school building, its toilet facilities just can’t cope up with the number of people seeking temporary shelter there.

What this country needs is to firm up its disaster preparedness and since we succumb to that old adage “an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure,” then I dare say that we should enact a law that allows the forced evacuation of the citizenry. Mind you, before Hurricane “Katrina” devastated New Orleans a few years ago, the federal government went into forced evacuation of families. Those who failed to obey were the ones who were swept away by the fury of the hurricane.

Sen. Legarda also pointed out that we must work feverishly to declog our esteros, canals and waterways, which is the right thing to do. However, the bigger problem remains that many shanty communities are located in those areas. Here in Cebu City, where flooding only hits the downtown business district, our creeks and rivers are clogged with squatters who build their homes on the five-meter easement, where no one is allowed to build anything. But then, the Office of the Building Official is powerless in stopping them, thanks to ugly politics that closes its eyes on these illegal structures.

Perhaps the greater warning we ought to heed not only from Sen. Legarda, but also from former US Vice President Al Gore is that our sea levels are rising and even they rose by a mere one meter, it is estimated that 129,000 hectares of land in 28 out of the 80 provinces will be submerged. As we said, if this happens, Boracay and Mactan will lose their tourism boom as the white beaches would now be underwater. Now this will become an economic catastrophe of biblical proportions! Should we wait to act before it happens?

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