Loren pushes active RP involvement in reducing carbon emissions

The Philippines must actively participate in global efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to help prevent extreme climactic changes that cause natural disasters, Sen. Loren Legarda said recently.

Noting efforts by the European Union to draw up the “most ambitious plan” on reducing emissions during UN climate talks in Poznan, Poland, Legarda said the Philippines “must do its share to fight global warming.”

Legarda, recently adjudged as the United Nations’ regional champion for disaster risk reduction, urged the government to adopt the Albay Declaration as a starting point of its Climate Change initiatives which should include efforts to mitigate the effects of climate change already being felt in the country.

“We, Filipinos, must implement a workable course of action to reduce greenhouse emissions in our part of the world, as well as set a timetable on achieving the goals we will lay down,” she said.

“The Philippines must march in cadence with the rest of the world in trying to stop global warming and the weather extremes that cause natural calamities like floods, tsunamis, landslides and droughts,” Legarda added in a statement.

In the 12-day Poland talks on climate change, Legarda said the EU proposed that its members and other developed economies should cut their emissions by 25 to 40 percent by 2020 based on the 1990 levels.

The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is organizing the conference which started last Monday.

Legarda lauded the EU’s initiatives, saying other countries should set lofty but realizable targets no matter how high the economic price they may entail.

The senator stressed that no economic price is too big when ranged against the environmental benefits to be derived from a shift to less-polluting technologies such as the so-called “green energies” like wind and water power.

“Climate change is very real and it is going to get worse unless something is done about it,” said Legarda, who was cited in 2001 by the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) for her environmental advocacy.

“The rains we are experiencing late in the year may be attributable to it already, along with the water shortages felt by many areas in the south,” she said.

Global warming is measured by the increase in average temperature of the Earth’s surface, air and water. Among its many feared effects are rising sea levels, glacier retreat, mass species extinction and climactic changes.

Climate change had been described as the biggest threat to humanity in the years to come unless global temperature is stabilized through the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.