The Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) is ready to provide a learning platform for cities that are committed to take action on climate change by reducing carbon emissions and promoting renewable energy.
The agency made this assurance at the local unveiling of Ambitious City Promises (ACP), a three-year regional project supporting cities in Indonesia, Philippines and Vietnam in developing and implementing low emissions strategies.
The project emphasizes community engagement across all stages of this process and will help cities establish lasting mechanisms to share knowledge and use participatory, bottom-up models for climate action.
Three Philippine cities — Pasig, Parañaque and Marikina — have been chosen as project sites that will receive assistance from the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI)-Local Governments for Sustainability and the Seoul Metropolitan Government (SMG).
At the ACP launch held Tuesday at Ortigas Center in Pasig City, DENR Assistant Secretary Corazon Davis expressed the country’s gratitude to ICLEI and SMG for choosing the Philippines as one of the ACP country recipients.
Speaking on behalf of DENR Secretary Roy A. Cimatu, Davis described the project as “very timely” as it came at a time when the country was reviewing its Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) to the landmark Paris agreement on climate change.
“As the country reviews its strengthened NDC, it will include cities at the forefront of implementing transformative low emission development projects,” Davis said.
“We at the DENR could provide a platform on how we could cascade the learnings of these three cities,” she added.
Davis expressed hope that more vulnerable and high-risk cities in the world will learn from the country’s “trailblazers to natural resources conservation and environment protection.”
According to Davis, the ACP project will “not reinvent, but rather continue the momentum” that the three cities have started in terms of fighting climate change.
Under the ACP project, Davis said there will be opportunities to “establish strong climate local action plans to concretize targets, and enhance multi-stakeholder strategies engagement and integrated strategies.” (DENR-PR)
