Climate change an issue that cannot be taken for granted - Loren

MANILA, Oct 1 (PNA) -- Senator Loren Legarda on Tuesday said the Philippines must show its seriousness in tackling climate change to mitigate its potential risks which are awesome to contemplate.

"In an ideal world, in the perfect hierarchy of issues that should animate the globe, climate change should be at the top of public policy concerns," Legarda told participants in the National Conference and Training Needs Assessment on Forests and Climate Change held at Crown Plaza Hotel in Ortigas, Pasig City.

"It is an issue larger than national poverty because the brutal manifestations of climate change impoverish not just communities and countries but the entire planet," she said, citing the Nargis incident in Myanmar wherein its rice deltas have been transformed into vast watery graveyards.

According to Legarda, the country should pay attention to climate change, saying "it is an issue more important than wars and famines, financial meltdowns, the collapse of those iconic houses of finance and the clash of civilizations."

"What is at stake in the climate change discussion is the very survival of peoples across the globe, regardless of race or creed, the survival of the human race itself," she warned.

Legarda, prime advocate of restoring the Philippines' once verdant landscape by batting for the planting of two billion trees under her Luntiang Pilipinas project, was keynote speaker in the event organized by Environmental Leadership and Training Initiative which was a joint program of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute.

Experts agree that the pace of climate change is tremendous, leaving the people, especially those in areas that are more vulnerable to calamity, little time to act. "For what's the sense of discussing growth in a world teetering on extinction?" she asked.

"It is a matter of life-and-death on an epic scale, and sadly, it is not at the top of policy concerns here and elsewhere," she added.

She nevertheless made it clear that the attention to climate change is given attention, as manifested by the proposed bill on climate change now waiting for approval in the Senate.