III. NATIONAL CONTEXT: KEY ELEMENTS OF THE NATIONAL POLICY FRAMEWORK - - PDF document

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• III. NATIONAL CONTEXT: KEY ELEMENTS

OF THE NATIONAL POLICY FRAMEWORK

• Hon. Mary Ann Lucille Sering

Secretary, Climate Change Commission Secretary Sering talked about the Natjonal Climate Change Plan of the Philippines, Green House Mitjgatjon Potentjal in the Philippines and potentjal of green jobs in the Philip-

• pines. During the forum, many questjons were raised in

relatjon to nuclear energy, renewable energy and climate change efgects.

Message:

Introductjon: First, I would like to introduce why we are here, why we created this commission. Something happened in 2009 that’s what the government and the country felt the need for a climate change act. In short this is a reactjon from the Ketsana and Parma typhoon in 2009. Come September the law was passed. What makes this difgerent and redundant is that the chairperson of Climate Change Comission is the President himself. Simply we are just exercising the accountability on issues of climate change. Natjonal Climate Change Actjon Plan Under the law we are required to pass the natjonal climate change actjon plan, a year afuer we fjnish our framework. Last year we are done with the natjonal climate change actjon plan and to be honest it is not yet signed by the president but it has already been unanimously signed by all the three commissioners. We are just trying to determine whether if it should be a commission resolutjon or an executjve order or those litule instruments. But we are confjdent to say that it is already approved. So the natjonal climate change actjon plan, if you will look at it, if you have to relate it to a discussion it will be under letuer P; the identjfjcatjon of green house gases mitjgatjon potentjal, and how this potentjal can mean something

• more. The rest is about science and since you have been

exposed already about the science behind this and the impacts on our country. I will focus now on The Assessment, Management and Risks of climate change. Because of climate change busi- nesses now are startjng to look at things difgerently. When you do a business plan you do your analysis-- knowing your strengths and weaknesses and risks. And now you are startjng to look at climate change as one of the disas- ter risks. Of course the identjfjcatjon of green house gases mitjgatjon potentjals and lastly is what are the optjons to take so that we will know what should be done now. Be- cause unfortunately we don’t have enough resources to take all of these. We can’t do them all at the same tjme. We know that we are visited by 25 typhoons every year. On the business side,prior to the 2009 calamity, the cost

• f damages excluded the death tolls; the damage was two

billion dollars (2B$). With Ondoy and Pepeng, with only two typhoons we sufgered almost like 4.3 billion dollars. Meaning, all of your investments for the past 20 years were destroyed by these two typhoons. It is alarming that based on statjstjcs half or almost half of this 4.3 billion dollar damage was incurred by the business sector. How will it afgect creatjon of jobs? How will it afgect jobs per se? We don’t have any data to show about the partjc- ular typhoon because the loss and the damages actually resulted to loss of jobs as well. Aside from the enterprise sector, the second afgected sec- tor is the farmer’s sector and then the housing sector. But it actually rippled creatjng another demand which is not actually green; which is because afuer the disaster they needed more new appliances, new aircon, new cars etc. So it somehow created new demand but we don’t if it was actually sustained. We don’t have any data. But what is also alarming is that the Philippines is a sittjng duck; we are not insured, we don’t have any catastrophe bond, we

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have to spend for the reconstructjon. That’s why accord- ing to World Bank estjmate, for just two typhoons we in- curred around 8 billion US dollars. That’s a lot of money that should have spent on basic services. Knowing that, fjnally we have some metrics for climate change. We are now looking at how the government despite how limited capacity we think we have. Given the natjonal budget wherein 40% goes to debt serv- icing, some of it goes to corruptjon and the rest goes to payment of self-services and others probably for the basic

• services. So in short we might be probably using just the

10-15% of government money. The good thing is that when I am speaking and opening about these things is that, the reason why President Aqui- no is trying so hard to show credibility and good govern- ance is that it also addresses all these problems. This is the data I got from DOLE last March 30, 2011. The data stated that there are low levels of employment and agriculture is the second highest employer. This sector is also very prone to economic shock, disasters and extreme weather disturbances. Given that the employment in agri- culture is seasonal, when we had El Nino; there was a de- crease in available jobs. And the latest data when we had a La Nina, data showed that we generated more jobs. This is an area where climate change needed to be looked in to. What is lacking for us? Again we are relying a lot on

• ur overseas remituance. But again this is the data that we

have to look more closely and seriously, we are not able to translate it to investments. In short we see this remituances improve our consumer market, our economy is heavily relying on consumerism. This poses great opportunity for green jobs. If there is a strong consumerism then there will be demand for green products, then industries that will prioritjze greening will now have a marketjng edge. Industries relying on environ- mental resources they are threatened because of climate change, they will be further threatened when they fully rely on natural resources. Another issue is the lack of access to employment oppor- tunitjes, despite economic growth it shows that unem- ployment was barely improved from 2005-2010. Manu- facturing contributed to decreasing unemployment during

Climate Change and Vice Chair and Secretary Mary Ann Lucille Sering presentjng the Natjonal Climate Change Plan of the Philippines. Secretary Sering expounding on the green house mitjgatjon potentjal. Secretary Sering elaboratjng on the climate change actjon plan being an opportunity for green jobs crea- tjon. Secretary Sering sharing her experiences in the Mindanao Region assistjng local government with the local climate change actjon plan

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the last few months. Because we push for call center too much, we now have a lot demand but cannot supply the

• manpower. “I am a Bisaya and a lot of Bisaya don’t nor-

mally get hired in an English speaking Britjsh accent call centers.” We are not saying that there aren’t a lot of peo- ple looking for a job, their job gets mismatched. When we are crafuing climate change actjon plan that is

• ne on thing we are conscious about. We might be very

successful in promotjng and making people aware, and yet when fjnally it is there we cannot provide for the sup-

• ply. Meaning we might have promoted something so good

and yet we cannot complement it with the supply. So if we push for example green manufacturing so that we can create green jobs we might not have enough local materi-

• als. So we are discussing on how to put a balance in trying

to make sure that we can generate more jobs by taking advantage of climate change and not looking at climate change as a disaster. We are looking at climate change and its opportunitjes. Because whatever we do, climate is really changing. Whether you believe it or not, we are pursuing these ac- tjvitjes because of the co-benefjts that it brings. We know that the Philippines is not the major contributor and yet we pursue all these things on other goals such as cleaner energy and lessen dependence on foreign oil. This data is from PAGASA. The data showed that in March, April and May (summer months) the entjre Philippines in 2020 will be experiencing less rain than the normal. And in summer 2050 Philippines will be very dry. And in June, July and August of 2020 Luzon will have more rain than usual, but in Mindanao considering it as our food basket, it is alarming because it will remain dry. What we wanted to show here is that what the govern- ment should do in prioritjzing public spending. We should do our vulnerability assessments. We should know what

• ur vulnerabilitjes are; not only because of infrastructure

investment but also for the private business sector. We have to be honest and put forward so that we could react and adapt accordingly. We have to contjnually try to be innovatjve and make sure that we can contjnue to gener- ate jobs. Green House Mitjgatjon Potentjal Based on our latest data that we found in our green house inventory, this data was from year 2000. Data shows that we already have two inventories from 1994 to 2000. It shows that all emissions increased because of the grow- ing economy. This is also because the demand for more energy also increased. Another striking idea is that emission coming from waste has also increased by 63%. This is another opportunity for effjciency, waste to energy and all those other indus- tries that we can look into as an area of potentjal. In the manufacturing industry, from 1994 to 2000 there was the 1997 crisis when almost all of companies lefu and went to

• China. There was a joke that says, “God made the world

and the rest is made in China”. So if you take out our for- est 55% of our emission was from the energy sector. But

• n energy side it is both use of oil and the transportatjon
• sector. That’s why there are a lot of DOE programs like

LPG, conversion, electric tricycles and jeepneys. But if they contjnue to use coal as they source of electricity so it is not so holistjc. We all have our policies in place; it is just a matuer of puttjng cohesion and convergence on decisions. And this is what President Noynoy has done; he created a new cabinet cluster wherein instead of the normal quarterly meetjng of the commission, we now meet monthly. We serve as the secretariat only because we don’t want to be part in the approval process because the role of the Climate Change Commission is to monitor and evaluate. In short we cannot be part of the approval process and the same tjme monitor and evaluate them. So let the im- plementjng agencies do the work. We are stjll trying to arrange a partnership wherein we can do a green audit. This is the plan. This is difgerent from the plans you see. It is not sectoral. Simply because we believe that one sec- tor cannot address a problem alone, we have to be to-

• gether. For example food security, someone told me, it is

just agriculture so let’s put agriculture there. What about the infrastructure that supports these food security are- as? What about DENR that provides protectjon on water- sheds that support irrigatjon? There must be convergence

• f efgorts in addressing a certain issue.

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Water suffjciency for example, maybe DPWH can help us in water harvestjng at the same tjme DOH should be there, since the moment we harvest water dengue might come in. So we have to put a balance on all of these initja- tjves. We make it simple but complicated. We wanted to show that issues like this cannot be done by one agency only. Nor can Climate Change Commission claim that it can do

• it. We are so small and we wanted to remain as such be-

cause this is something that can be done by the agencies. We would like to stay behind and contjnued help and co-

• rdinate with each other makes sense of all these things.

If we look at climate change mitjgatjon opportunitjes like for example transport. There is a program of shifuing to CFLs. It could have been a very good opportunity. We have a 700B dollars potentjal for energy effjciency but what happened was, middle class families were buying incandescent to exchange it for CFLs for free, so the sales of incandescent increased. The CFLs are now probably busted some of it are stjll in the DENR and what was actually lefu was the loan. Did we create a new industry? Did we create new jobs? So the potentjal of using money is always there, how do we use this foreign money/loan so that we create more opportunitjes? Waste to energy for example, you needed a lot of waste to generate energy. The Local government said “Oh there is money in waste, let’s collect waste”. But what we are failing to tell them is that it takes years before you can actually turn this methane into energy. So that’s why on the other side of the coin, people are now advocatjng the “Zero Basura” wherein you recycle, but what are we do- ing now? In transport, they are now already doing the electric tricy- cle, there are 5Million electric tricycles. But what we have discovered is that banks are not lending to them. So they contjnue paying for boundaries. There is a new program though to replace electric tricycles, it is a loan but now they are promotjng lithium ion batueries. Electric tricycle is around 250,000 Php. Even if you give them the electric tricyles and they accept it because the down payment and loans are easy, once that the batuery rans out they will go back to lead. So what I am saying is, unless we can create a lithium ion batuery industry that will reduced the cost it might not be good to adapt this technology. That is what we are saying about green auditjng. It is the same way when we talk about green businesses, we don’t want to do green washing. This is where our partnership with DOLE will be very crucial; we will ensure decent work while the other agencies will ensure environ- mental sustainability. This is the kind of partnership that we are trying to promote, which is convergence. It is like when DOLE says that, “Why are we being blamed for lack

• f jobs, it’s other agencies responsibility too, we are just

making sure that the jobs are present and they are there. ” Then I realized I used to blame DOLE as well for jobs loss. Now we are trying to see that DOLE might be a litule bit more proactjve knowing the potentjal of climate change and how probably job agenda green can push DOLE to cre- ate more jobs and not rely on DTI alone. But DTI is there to help us with the investments. If we are just a coordinated body how can we be efgec- tjve? The law mandates us to assist local government directly with the local climate change actjon plan. Meaning we have to help them directly. We have to show them where the money is, and sad to say we cannot do a lot with our

• budget. We cannot even be sued for plunder, plunder is

50 million and a half, and ours is below that. But this year I think we have been successful in talking, pushing and knocking on doors, Secretary Butch Abad increased our budget by 100%. It means, we can now assist 15 LGUs, we decided to pick the ones with the poorest provinces, not only because it is moral but because the baseline is easy so success is re- garded as easy and at the same tjme these are located at the eastern seaboard. Surigao del norte, Eastern Samar , Agustan Del Sur, these are perennial provinces and weather is really hampering their growth. “I have to stop feeling guilty eatjng cheese- burgers while my neighbors can only eat lobsters.”฀ The mayor said, “You know secretary, help us have a plan, not so many plans, disaster risk plan. etc.”. And I said “ok, show me your plans I will just put one component there.” But what would be the efgect? In one year we will reduce the poverty from 10-20%. How will you do that? Simple,

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by revolving your economy with what is common to you. Do not pretend with what you are not. If you have a mangrove, start with mangrove, if you have a watershed, start with your watershed. We already have the framework. We are startjng with the fjrst 10 LGUs. The mayor said it is so unfair we are being judged based on how much income our family produced, but no one dies

• f hunger here, you eat lobster your neighbor also eat
• lobsters. If they are hungry they just go out and fjsh. But

we are being judged that we are 60% below poverty line. Their problem is that when they have a catch, they don’t know where to sell it, there is no infrastructure. Undersecretary Merly said, “ I can buy my bamboo cheaper in Visayas than in Quezon. Why is that? Because infrastruc- ture is betuer in Visayas than the road coming from Que-

• zon. So when we address all these things, again DPWH for

the infrastructure and the private sector for PPP to make sure that the poor will be part of the inclusive growth. So the plan is very simple, we will look at the LGUs, will start at the municipalitjes, we will look fjnancing for them given that they will pass a good performance based rat- ing system before they can avail of this fjnancing, use it properly, don’t just get it for the sake of gettjng it, but to actually have a very good development that looks more like a business class. Because if the private sector will not invest because you are so small, and the infrastructure is bad, then the government’s partjcipatjon really plays an important part in interventjon of creatjng more jobs. We have to at least reduce migratjon, if you ask urban poor here if they can go back in the province to have a work, they will overwhelmingly answer yes. Because the

• nly reason why they rush to the urban areas is that there

are no jobs in the countryside. So we already tackled about the ecosystem services, vul- nerable populatjon, framework, what are those economic actjvitjes, bundle of assistance interventjon that govern- ment will do, we start with a conditjonal cash transfer, but we call it payment for ecosystem services. We will be re- quiring them to do something for the mangroves, protect

• them. They will be going to get part of the yield; part of it

goes to the LGU and sees how it works revolving the fund and the government should also provide cost sharing, an insurance to lessen the risks. And then lastly, the biggest part of the commission is to provide technical assistance

• n what are the adaptatjon and mitjgatjon measures. And

that is the framework for the local climate change actjon plan. To give you another illustratjon, DENR is stjll aiding our forest, we have a reforestatjon program, it enhanced our carbon sink, it also improves our watershed and water se- curity, water security provides food security towards agri- culture, for example mangrove will also improve our fjsh yields, we have the genetjc resources by prospectjng our forests we can get medicines. Do you know that indige- nous people’s blood is now being taken out and patented because it is a cure for hypertension? It is now an IP case, because the doctor who went there has patented it in her name, and then the IP complained that it’s their blood. Mindanao will be dry in 10 years and now they are startjng to complain. Mindanao is one of the biggest potentjal for solar energy. We already have one megawatu solar plant in Cagayan de Oro. In short it has been there we just have to scale it up. We are the fjrst in Southeast Asia to have wind mills in Banggi. In other countries they think it is bad ae- thestjcally, but in Banggi it’s a tourist aturactjon. And this is where Usec Merely comes in we are building an airport

• ut of bamboo and become an eco-tourism there. There

is a scuba diver here that is so brave and is fjghtjng with the great white shark, if you notjce he will be gone afuer a few seconds, not because he will be eaten by the shark but because there will be a tsunami. And the mangrove will provide not just an adaptatjon strategy but also as a mitjgatjon strategy. It’s a cheaper way to put a barrier. The characteristjcs of most rural areas are like these. It’s like going back to nature. God gave us nature and we did industrializatjon, we are just actually going back on how we used to live.

Moderated Plenary Q & A Session:

Questjon: Can you further elaborate regarding human security and hydropower in Mindanao? Answer: Human security is an integratjon of disaster risk management and climate change adaptatjon. There are two laws under this: the climate change act and the disas- ter risk management act. One of the things we are doing right now is the integratjon of how we can maximize the potentjal of climate change and at the same tjme, use it

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as a functjon of our adaptatjon. We just signed an agree- ment with Secretary Jasmin we are calling it one against risk, when we sit together we make sure that all our poli- cies are aligned. And where we are right now, there is stjll a debate, they can use already 5% of the budget of proactjve approaches, but when you look at the fjeld they stjll have the old mind- sets, they are stjll reactjve buying tag boats, fmashlights and now they would like the bill repealed and amended because they realized they can no longer use the 5% for the bonuses. But that is where we are right now; we are

• n the infant stage.

In the case of Hydropower in Mindanao, there are two groups confmictjng, saying that it can be increasingly ex- pensive; on the other hand according to the other group it is just initjally expensive now, but it will be cheaper in the long run. Comparing solar, wind and hydro in terms of ef- fjciency, hydro will stjll be betuer. We need to also consider this partjcular informatjon from PAGASA. If it’s going to be drier and those hydropower will stjll not sustain the need that is why we stjll see coal stjll lurking on that program simply because it stjll remains a cheap source. We are trying to address it yearly at least with a long term vision and the Natjonal Renewable Energy Board (NREB) is stjll in a deep debate whether they should proceed with the Feed-in-Tarifg (FIT) or how it will look like or whether they should refer the implementatjon of the RA 9513 which we do not want to happen. Anyway the President already declared that we will have 50% renewable energy sources by 2020. I guess in that sense we cannot be perfect but we have to be practjcal and logical. Follow up questjon: Will it be cheaper to plant trees than to use solar and wind energy? Answer: Puttjng it to context, we are using renewable sources for two things: we are reducing carbon emissions and it also provides electricity. That is why I’m talking about the co-benefjts. We have a lot of sources. We are second in geothermal, one of the highest potentjal in southeast asia in solar and wind. We simply want to do this because it’s localized, it is not imported, not just because of reduc- ing carbon for clean air and also the sources are readily

• available. Of course we want trees to be planted obviously

but even the forest can stjll be source of renewable energy for the biosphere. Is it cheaper? We don’t know. They are spending 3Billion for reforestatjon.

Partjcipants actjvely joining the moderated plenary Q & A session with Secretary Sering. A partjcipant inquiring about hydropower in Mind- anao and the usage of renewable energy in the Phil- ippines. A partjcipant asking about the Climate Change Com- mission’s stand on using nuclear energy. Some partjcipants commentjng on nuclear energy usage of Japan and South Korea.

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Questjon: Talking about GHG, are you considering nu- clear energy to minimize efgect of GHG? Answer: Nuclear energy is clean source of energy but the issues are its safety and cost. Even Japan now is saying that they are going to phase out nuclear powerplants. Questjon: Are there possibilitjes of increasing our con- sumptjon of fossil fuel in the future? Answer: Yes there is a big possibility but that is the rea- son why we are trying to shifu to renewable sources of en- ergy. Questjon: Is CCC against nuclear energy? Answer: We are not against it, but we have to ensure its

• safety. It is something that we can put there untjl we are

all ready. Because it is a technology that has been ma- tured and being used in developed countries and those who have seen and used it in the United States, it is one of the cheapest energy source. Comment from the partjcipant: There is a pressing is- sue regarding nuclear energy, and a lot of environmental groups in the Philippines are against it. Even one of the ILO offjcer before Masahiro Isibashi, he is a Japanese but he is saying that we should not go for nuclear energy. Be- cause in our case we are afraid that it is part of the PDP’s plan. Answer: I can’t speak in behalf of PDP. Removing myself from CCC , haven’t we learned from others’ experiences? South Koreans proposed that it is suitable for the Philip- pines given the safety measures. But look at the case of Japan, what happened to Japan?

A group representatjve showing their shopping list afuer going around the four program presentatjons. ILO representatjves introducing the ILO Green Jobs Initjatjve and the ILO Green Jobs Programme.