III. NATIONAL CONTEXT: KEY ELEMENTS OF THE NATIONAL POLICY FRAMEWORK Hon. Mary Ann Lucille Sering Secretary, Climate Change Commission Secretary Sering talked about the Natjonal Climate Change more. The rest is about science and since you have been Plan of the Philippines, Green House Mitjgatjon Potentjal exposed already about the science behind this and the in the Philippines and potentjal of green jobs in the Philip - impacts on our country. pines. During the forum, many questjons were raised in relatjon to nuclear energy, renewable energy and climate I will focus now on The Assessment, Management and change efgects. Risks of climate change. Because of climate change busi - nesses now are startjng to look at things difgerently. When you do a business plan you do your analysis-- knowing your strengths and weaknesses and risks. And now you Message: are startjng to look at climate change as one of the disas - ter risks. Of course the identjfjcatjon of green house gases Introductjon: mitjgatjon potentjals and lastly is what are the optjons to take so that we will know what should be done now. Be - First, I would like to introduce why we are here, why we cause unfortunately we don’t have enough resources to created this commission. Something happened in 2009 take all of these. We can’t do them all at the same tjme. that’s what the government and the country felt the need for a climate change act. In short this is a reactjon from We know that we are visited by 25 typhoons every year. the Ketsana and Parma typhoon in 2009. On the business side,prior to the 2009 calamity, the cost of damages excluded the death tolls; the damage was two Come September the law was passed. What makes this billion dollars (2B$). With Ondoy and Pepeng, with only difgerent and redundant is that the chairperson of Climate two typhoons we sufgered almost like 4.3 billion dollars. Change Comission is the President himself. Simply we are just exercising the accountability on issues of climate Meaning, all of your investments for the past 20 years change. were destroyed by these two typhoons. It is alarming that based on statjstjcs half or almost half of this 4.3 billion Natjonal Climate Change Actjon Plan dollar damage was incurred by the business sector. Under the law we are required to pass the natjonal climate How will it afgect creatjon of jobs? How will it afgect jobs change actjon plan, a year afuer we fjnish our framework. per se? We don’t have any data to show about the partjc - Last year we are done with the natjonal climate change ular typhoon because the loss and the damages actually actjon plan and to be honest it is not yet signed by the resulted to loss of jobs as well. president but it has already been unanimously signed by all the three commissioners. Aside from the enterprise sector, the second afgected sec - tor is the farmer’s sector and then the housing sector. But We are just trying to determine whether if it should be it actually rippled creatjng another demand which is not a commission resolutjon or an executjve order or those actually green; which is because afuer the disaster they litule instruments. But we are confjdent to say that it is needed more new appliances, new aircon, new cars etc. already approved. So the natjonal climate change actjon plan, if you will look So it somehow created new demand but we don’t if it was at it, if you have to relate it to a discussion it will be under actually sustained. We don’t have any data. But what is letuer P; the identjfjcatjon of green house gases mitjgatjon also alarming is that the Philippines is a sittjng duck; we potentjal, and how this potentjal can mean something are not insured, we don’t have any catastrophe bond, we F o u n d a t i o n T r a i n i n g o n G r e e n J o b s 21
have to spend for the reconstructjon. That’s why accord - ing to World Bank estjmate, for just two typhoons we in - curred around 8 billion US dollars. That’s a lot of money that should have spent on basic services. Knowing that, fjnally we have some metrics for climate change. We are now looking at how the government despite how limited capacity we think we have. Given the natjonal budget wherein 40% goes to debt serv - icing, some of it goes to corruptjon and the rest goes to payment of self-services and others probably for the basic Climate Change and Vice Chair and Secretary Mary services. So in short we might be probably using just the Ann Lucille Sering presentjng the Natjonal Climate 10-15% of government money. Change Plan of the Philippines. The good thing is that when I am speaking and opening about these things is that, the reason why President Aqui - no is trying so hard to show credibility and good govern- ance is that it also addresses all these problems. This is the data I got from DOLE last March 30, 2011. The data stated that there are low levels of employment and agriculture is the second highest employer. This sector is also very prone to economic shock, disasters and extreme weather disturbances. Given that the employment in agri - Secretary Sering expounding on the green house mitjgatjon potentjal. culture is seasonal, when we had El Nino; there was a de - crease in available jobs. And the latest data when we had a La Nina, data showed that we generated more jobs. This is an area where climate change needed to be looked in to. What is lacking for us? Again we are relying a lot on our overseas remituance. But again this is the data that we have to look more closely and seriously, we are not able to translate it to investments. In short we see this remituances improve our consumer market, our economy is heavily relying on consumerism. Secretary Sering elaboratjng on the climate change actjon plan being an opportunity for green jobs crea - This poses great opportunity for green jobs. If there is a tjon. strong consumerism then there will be demand for green products, then industries that will prioritjze greening will now have a marketjng edge. Industries relying on environ - mental resources they are threatened because of climate change, they will be further threatened when they fully rely on natural resources. Another issue is the lack of access to employment oppor - tunitjes, despite economic growth it shows that unem - ployment was barely improved from 2005-2010. Manu - facturing contributed to decreasing unemployment during Secretary Sering sharing her experiences in the Mindanao Region assistjng local government with the local climate change actjon plan 22 F o u n d a t i o n T r a i n i n g o n G r e e n J o b s
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