Reducing risks of calamities

It is a refreshing development to see that some of our national and local government officials continue to busy themselves with more productive activities that would benefit our people and our country, if not now, perhaps later on. Specifically, I refer to the joint national and local government efforts to bring to public awareness and consciousness the looming dangers of global warming and the potential impact to our lives of the phenomena related to climate change.

I got to know more about these activities from a full page advertisement that came out yesterday at The STAR on “The Albay Declaration on Climate Change Adaptation.” It was signed by its lead convenor, former Congressman of Albay Joey Salceda who is now the Governor of the province. It stated the 14-point plan of action that was unanimously adopted during the First National Conference on Climate Change Adaptation held on Oct. 23 in Albay. It was appropriately dubbed as “Aksyon ng Pinoy para sa Kalikasan.”

As this Declaration rightly cited, the Philippines being an archipelagic country, is highly vulnerable to climate risks and weather disturbances such as tropical cyclones and prolonged droughts resulting to social and ecological devastation and economic loss. It urged our policy-makers to institutionalize climate change adaptation measures to address climate risks expeditiously.

Salceda only knows too well where he speaks from in strongly advocating government priority attention about climate change because he comes from a calamity-prone province. Albay and the rest of the Bicol region provinces are located in the so-called typhoon belt area of the Philippines. But the people of Albay face far more serious threats of lahar, mudslides and violent eruption of Mt. Mayon which is considered as one of the world’s most active volcanoes.

Barely a few months into office as Governor, Salceda passed with flying colors his first ever brush in dealing with calamity in his province. To his credit, he demonstrated the brand of his leadership in local governance in achieving a zero casualty during the onslaught of two successive typhoons, Lando and Mina, both of which directly hit Bicol. Implementing a pro-active disaster mitigation and preparedness program, Salceda evacuated residents out of the Mayon danger zones as well as people in other low lying areas vulnerable to possible mud or lahar slides even before the typhoons arrived.

However, he  turned out like a boy who cried wolf when the expected impact of typhoons Lando and Mina did not unleash destructive rains and floods. Praise the Lord! Nonetheless, this would not diminish his leadership on how our local government executives should act in times of calamities, whether natural or man-made.

Instead of being thankful when the projected strength of these typhoons failed to materialize, certain people blamed poor weather forecasting by the PAGASA, or short for Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical, Astronomical Services Administration. This government agency, attached to the Department of Science and Technology (DOST), almost always gets the flak when their weather forecasts fail. It would do well for the government, especially by Congress while they are deliberating on the proposed 2008 budget bill, to provide the logistical support needed by our experts in PAGASA to help them do their weather forecasting job as accurately as possible.

Despite the usual lack of logistics, it was some kind of a welcome news when Nathaniel Cruz, PAGASA weather services chief announced yesterday that the agency would come out starting summer next year with “human comfort index.” Cruz said this new advisory service would alert motorists with updates on temperature on specific traffic-prone areas in Metro Manila and elsewhere around the country. This advisory, he explained, would hopefully reduce incidence of “road rage” when hot-headed motorists could turn violent and drive them crazy enough to kill people over traffic altercations or parking feud or for whatever flimsiest reason.

These activities related to climate change though do not often get printed in the front page or become top stories aired on radio and TV primetime newscasts because these are not controversial enough to whet the interest of the people in general. We have to bear with media-hogging personalities, with calamity-proportion egos, in the likes of mutiny-fixated “Magdalo” rebel officers in the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) led by former Navy Lt. Senior Grade Antonio Trillanes IV now Senator of the Republic. By the way, the father of Trillanes hails from Ligao, Albay although the enfant terrible of the “Magdalo” mutineers grew up in Caloocan City.

Like PAGASA at times when it gives faulty weather forecasting (fortunately it occurs rarely now), even the AFP failed to detect from their intelligence radar screen this latest coup plot of Trillanes and his “Magdalo” cohorts.

Esperon, who is now on the last few months of his tour of duty, insisted there was no failure of military intelligence. He claimed they have information that Trillanes was up to something but they just don’t know when and how they would carry it out. While we can now effectively reduce risks of natural calamities with more accurate weather forecasting, something has to be done to improve the intelligence-gathering of our military coup plot monitors who turned out clueless in this latest  Trillanes caper.

Or better yet, perhaps a Bicolano like Sen. Trillanes should start subscribing to the Albay Declaration that states: “Action on climate change is a civic duty of all citizens. It offers our society vast opportunity for social inclusion and political harmony.” Perhaps, our common national concern over the serious threats of climate change to our national well-being could be tapped as a unifying bond for a calamity-prone country like ours.