By Catherine Teves/PNA
MANILA — The Climate Change Commission (CCC) and the Development Academy of the Philippines (DAP) have partnered to develop and roll out next year a course aimed at helping local government units (LGUs) build community resilience against climate change.
“The way forward is to come up with specific interventions and capacity-building for our local chief executives and local department officials,” CCC strategic partnerships chief Alexis Lapiz said on Thursday at the sidelines of the 2nd National Convention on Climate Change and Disaster Risk Reduction in Taguig City.
The convention is part of the country’s celebration of the Global Warming and Climate Change Consciousness Week.
Lapiz said the course will be based on modules that the CCC has developed under its Communities for Resilience (CORE) Convergence Program.
“Those will be complemented by DAP’s modules on professionalism and leadership,” he continued.
Lapiz said CORE promotes “whole-of-government-and-society approaches” for strengthening LGUs’ climate adaptation and resilience planning capacity.
He said the CCC and the DAP have been coordinating for nearly two months already on the course’s development. DAP will administer the course, Lapiz said.
For local chief executives, he said, the course’s duration might take up to three weeks, and between three to six months for local department heads.
Lapiz said resilience-building must be tackled in greater detail during the course to better prepare the local executives for their respective planning activities.
“We hope that by March 2019, we’ll be able to come up with something more specific in preparation for the course’s roll-out later that year,” he said.
Proclamation 1667 series of 2008 declared Nov. 19 to 25 of every year as GWCCCW, enjoining all government offices to conduct activities related to it.
For 2018, the celebration’s theme is “The 1.5°C climate challenge: Survive and thrive together”.
“The science is unequivocal: Climate change is moving faster than us,” CCC Vice-Chairperson Emmanuel de Guzman said. “We need faster and bolder responses from all if we are to win this fight for human survival and security. We must rise to the 1.5°C challenge to survive and thrive together.”
De Guzman said it is the present generation’s moral responsibility to ensure that future generations will survive and thrive amid the climate change.
“Humanity can avoid the grim scenario if all will act faster and bolder to innovate our ways of living, shift our paradigms, make our industries carbon-neutral, and transform our society,” he said.
