Climate change risks make DDR a necessity

Scientists have gathered evidence to prove that the Earth have been experiencing extreme warming since 1998 to the present, with the four most recent years (2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017) the warmest globally since 1880. (NASA)

Three United Nations reports recently revealed the increasing risks emanating from the effects of climate change.

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO), UN International Strategy for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR) and Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) all released science-based findings to justify extreme measures in the name of climate action.

The report from WMO secretary-general Petteri Taalas in Geneva dated 28 March 2019 stated that the “physical signs and socio-economic impacts of climate change are accelerating as record greenhouse gas concentrations drive global temperatures towards increasingly dangerous levels.”

“Climate science has achieved an unprecedented degree of robustness, providing authoritative evidence of global temperature increase and associated features such as accelerating sea level rise, shrinking sea ice, glacier retreat and extreme events such as heat waves,” the WMO report said.

The Food and Agriculture Organization and World Food Programme also noted that the number of undernourished people had increased to 821 million, partly due to severe droughts associated with El Niño in 2015 and 2016.

“There is no longer any time for delay, and understanding the impacts of climate change on sustainable development goals and the socio-economic consequences of increasingly intense extreme weather on countries around the world have become crucial,” an IPCC report read.

Albay Rep. Joey Salceda, House Ways and Means Committee chair and principal author of the Department of Disaster Resilience bill now pending in Congress, said the reports rendered more crucial the plan to position the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA) under the proposed DDR.

“These findings showed that the DDR proposal is a vital legislation, especially following a series of earthquakes that rocked Mindanao recently,” Salceda said of the bill certified urgent by President Rodrigo Duterte.

The bill proposes the transfer of PAGASA and the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (PHIVOLCS), currently under the Department of Science and Technology (DOST), to the DDR to harmonize disaster risk assessment, reduction and mitigation, warning and response, along with relief, retrieval and rehabilitation under one roof.

Salceda said PAGASA is vital to the DDR to “guarantee unity of command, and science-based approach to and full-time focus on natural hazards and, even human-induced, disasters.”

As proposed, the DDR will be a full-blown department headed by a secretary. It will have the Office of Civil Defense (OCD) as its core organization.

President Duterte has endorsed the DDR creation in his past State of the Nation Addresses.

The House passed the DDR proposal in the 17th Congress but it failed to hurdle the Senate due to time constraints imposed by the 2019 midterm elections.