Resilience Institute launched in Diliman

MANILA, Philippines - A hub dedicated to addressing environmental issues such as climate change was launched Tuesday at the University of the Philippines Diliman campus.?             

The UP Resilience Institute (RI) is envisioned as a center providing benchmark innovative information vital in climate change actions and disaster risk reduction efforts.?             

RI executive director Mahar Lagmay explained, “The institute will be an inclusive multi-disciplinary approach by the university system to produce effective and efficient capacity building programs which are essential in forming sustainable development plans that will benefit all Filipinos, especially the poor and other marginalized sectors.”?               

“The UP RI believes that the long-term solution to our country’s disaster problems will be best achieved through the collaborative competent contributions of not only science and technology, but arts and humanities as well,” Lagmay said.?               

He added that disaster problems are not only solved through technological means. “It is more than that. We need to understand people’s mind and culture. We will be needing the help of social scientists, anthropologists, psychologists, sociologists, information officers.”               

Lagmay also underscored the role of UP RI to lead in mapping out blueprints for local government units on implementing genuine progress as they address and overcome the challenges of future catastrophes.?               

RI operations will be coordinated with the UP National Operational Assessment of Hazards (NOAH) Center.?               

The NOAH center under the RI will intensify its functions to vigorously make available and offer comprehensible reports necessary for the country’s 144 cities and 1,490 municipalities in responding to various calamities and facilitate proper vulnerability management in their respective areas of jurisdiction.               

So far, close to 200 UP faculty members have reportedly expressed intention to become part of the RI. The launch was held at the Bahay ng Alumni.?               

Meanwhile, at a recent climate conference in Melbourne, carbon capture and storage is gradually gaining government attention after being overtaken by investment in wind and solar energy.         

Saying the technology will be crucial to limiting global warming, International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates carbon capture and storage (CCS) will be needed to cut 14 percent of the emissions that have to be abated by 2060 to limit the global rise in temperature to less than two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit).

“The size of the challenge really requires all technologies to be deployed,” IEA energy analyst Samantha McCulloch told Reuters on the sidelines of a Global CCS Institute forum in Melbourne.

By one estimate, $80 billion has been invested in renewable energy compared with $20 billion in CCS, Australia’s ambassador for the environment, Patrick Suckling, told the forum.

Efforts to expand carbon capture and storage include a Japanese project to bury carbon dioxide below the seabed off Hokkaido island and construction of China’s first large-scale carbon capture, utilization and storage project at a coal-to-chemicals plant run by Yanchang Petroleum in Xian.

In Australia, the government has proposed allowing its A$10 billion ($7.6 billion) Clean Energy Finance Corp. to provide loans to carbon capture projects as part of a “technology-neutral” approach to cutting carbon emissions.

“We’re seeing renewed interest from governments,” McCulloch said.– With Reuters