Press Release
October 25, 2009

GOOD GOVERNANCE VITAL TO CLIMATE CHANGE ADAPTATION,
SAYS LOREN IN REPORT

Sen. Loren Legarda, chair of the Senate committee on climate change adaptation, yesterday stressed the need for good governance for communities to meet the challenges of climate change and reduce disaster casualties and damage.

"Development cannot be focused only on economic gains without the accompanying responsibility of good governance. Development should not create risks for our people and our economy. We need to ensure the resilience of our development investments," said Loren.

In a "Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction 2009: Executive Brief", Loren said, "The world as a whole must act immediately to seize and reduce disaster risks. For the global picture has been grim. The world in the year 2008 alone saw 321 disasters which killed about a quarter of a million people and affected more than 200 million lives.

"The total economic cost was a stunning 180 billion US dollars, which is twice the average annual economic losses of the past seven years. And the region of the Asia and the Pacific has borne much of the brunt, accounting for more than 80 percent of the global loss of life.

"About 70 to 80 per cent of disasters have been climate-related. And yet, given the gloomy scenario of climate change, more disasters are expected to happen. Indeed, climate change and disaster risks have become one of the greatest challenges to human development the world faces today."

Based on the recently released Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction, Loren stated, disaster risks will only be reduced if countries successfully address the three underlying drivers of risk: poor urban governance, ecosystem decline, and vulnerable rural livelihoods.

"If these drivers are not addressed, climate change will lead to dramatic increases in disaster risk and associated poverty outcomes in developing countries," Loren warned. She cited the stagger ravages of typhoons Ondoy and Pepeng in Luzon to illustrate her warning.

Explaining further, Loren said that improving urban governance involves stopping corruption and enforcing building codes, among others; protecting ecosystems which involves protecting forests, cleaning rivers, and stopping pollution, among others; and enhancing rural livelihoods means improving agricultural productivity and supporting farmers better.

For good governance, she cited Japan were 22.5 million people are exposed annually to typhoons, compared to 16 million people in the Philippines. However, the estimated annual death toll in the Philippines is almost 17 times greater than that of Japan. Overall, tropical cyclone mortality risk in low-income countries is approximately 200 times higher than in countries of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), for similar numbers exposed.

"Although we tend to focus only on the big disasters -- the report has highlighted that it is the smaller disasters - the ones that kill less than 10 people and destroy less than 10 houses - which we should be especially wary about. This kind of disasters is on the rise - turbocharged by climate change. They diminish our capital, especially for the poor - human, economic, social and environmental capital - making us less resilient and unable to resist disasters and any crisis a typical household may face, be it disease, loss of jobs or livelihoods," Loren said.

"Poor rural livelihoods, dependent on rain-fed agriculture and on a single main harvest for annual food and income, are highly vulnerable to weather fluctuations and hazards, which can lead to crop or livestock loss. Poor and indebted households have little or no surplus capacity to absorb these losses and to recover," she declared.

On ecosystems, she said, over the last century, the proportion of land area covered by forest in the Philippines has fallen from 22 percent in 1990 to just 19.4 percent in 2000. As recorded, large area of forest lands were already converted to tree plantation, mining and marginal upland agriculture which gave a 1.4 per cent average deforestation rate from 1990 to 2000, the highest among Asian countries.

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