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Friday, March 29, 2024

Resilience in concrete terms

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Francois Hollande, the president of France, came to the Philippines last week to see for himself the damage wrought by typhoon Yolanda, international name Haiyan, in November 2013.

Together with his team, Mr. Hollande visited the municipality of Guiuan in Eastern Samar where the monster howler made first landfall on that day.

The typhoon, said to be the strongest typhoon to hit land in history, killed thousands and displaced millions of Filipinos not only in the eastern side of the country but across the central Philippines, along the so-called Yolanda corridor.

Mr. Hollande also made a loan offer, through the French Development Agency, of 50 million euros — roughly $56.6 million — to fund projects to prevent further disasters in the Philippines.

The next climate change negotiations will take place in Paris later this year, after countries of the world agreed in Lima, Peru last December to come up with firm commitments on cutting their greenhouse gas emissions. What will be agreed upon in Paris, if the negotiators manage to come up with a binding agreement at all, will affect the lives of billions of people.

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In the Manila Call to Action on Climate Change, both Presidents Hollande and Benigno Aquino III underlined the urgency of addressing climate change seriously, efficiently and equitably.

Both leaders acknowledged that countries which are most vulnerable to the climate change, like the Philippines, contributed the least to the centuries-long build up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Yet, they suffer the most because of their lack of ability to mitigate, prepare for and respond to these events, as well as rehabilitate themselves after disasters.

Developed and developing countries  in a position to help must do so, especially in enabling vulnerable nations to achieve adequate means for implementation of their resilience plans.

“Resilient” has been a word used to describe the Filipinos spirit especially in dealing with unfortunate events like disasters.  The word has to have meaning in more concrete terms. It must refer to individuals, communities, local governments and a nation prepared to minimize the effects of natural and man-made calamities through careful planning and deliberate, pro-active steps.

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