By Alexander Villafania
MAKATI CITY, METRO MANIL A-- The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF-Philippines) and the Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI) Foundation will add six Philippine cities in the 2012 Climate Change and Business Risk Assessment study.
The six cities, namely Laoag, Dagupan, Bacolod, Cagayan de Oro, Lucena, and Zamboanga, are added after the onslaught of typhoon Sendong.
“Climate impacts are already known for many parts of the Philippines. However, pertinent, city-specific information to allow practical site-relevant business risk management decisions remain severely limited,” said WWF-Philippines vice chairman and chief executive Jose Lorenzo Tan.
The study comes less than six months after the release of the first Business Risk Assessment study, which looked into socio-economic impact on the cities of Baguio, Cebu, Iloilo, and Davao from exposure to climate change.
At the core of the assessment is a three-vector analysis that uses climate exposure, socio-economic sensitivity, and the target city’s adaptive capacity to mitigate further negative impact.
A 20-year timeframe is needed to gauge trends on a city's vulnerability to the effects of climate change.
A challenge in the study is the lack of enough information to gauge business risk in a certain locality, which hinders proper decision-making for adaptive projects, said Tan.
The recent flash floods that hit Cagayan de Oro and Iligan in December showed how the lack of climate change risk assessment. This made it impossible for the local government to assess the eventual effects of certain human activities in the area.
“Sendong” killed some 1,257 persons, with more still missing.
“We must act soon, for what happened to Cagayan de Oro last December can happen in your own city. Remember, the price of procrastination is paid in billions of pesos—or in precious lives. Let not the lessons of Ondoy, Pepeng and Sendong come to waste. Adaptation is our key to survival,” Tan said.
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