His Excellency Ambassador David Hartman, the Ambassador of Canada; Chairperson Edwina Garchitorena, and the rest of the Board of Trustees of the Forest Foundation Philippines (FFP), distinguished guests and partners.

Isang makakalikasang araw po sa inyong lahat, and a very warm welcome and congratulations to the Philippine Canadian Partnership on Nature-based Solutions for Climate Adaptation (PCP4NbS).

The DENR congratulates the FFP, and of course we all know that we are part of that Board as well, and the Government of Canada, for this partnership that strengthens the resilience of the Filipino people – especially rural and indigenous women – against the impacts of the interconnected crisis due to impacts of climate change, the loss of biodiversity, the degradation and diminishing of our green and blue forests, pollution, conflict and the cascading impacts these may have on the resilience and sustainability of our country.

We must recognize that for a climate vulnerable country like the Philippines, while mitigation has been strategic, building capacity for adaptation has been and continues to be both critical and urgent. This is especially important when we consider our ecosystems and the services they deliver as the lifeblood of our communities and the support they give to different sectors in our economy. We also know that gender-based vulnerability is compounded by intersectionality. Marginalization and multiple social and physical burdens compound the climate risk. When gender intersects, conflict, ethnicity, age, literacy, poverty and disability, vulnerability to the impacts of extreme weather and other hazards deepens thus the importance of this particular initiative.

During the 28th Conference of Parties of the UN FCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change), the Philippine Government presented the completion of the National Adaptation Plan (NAP). This was deemed very important in terms of defining the scope and magnitude of our needs.

In the NAP, the cost of inaction on adaptation within the 2030 decade is estimated to be around Php1.4 Trillion about 8% of 2020 GDP. Nature-based solutions are critical to our arsenal and must be rooted in the best available science as well as indigenous and local knowledge. Scaling up is part of the thematic areas that we address in the NAP, and this particular project is well within those areas.

We look towards protecting and rehabilitating biodiversity, critical habitats and ecosystems amidst the climate hazards that they face and the climate vulnerability of communities.

Confronting this challenge, the DENR has taken a whole-of-government approach in crafting the new evidence-informed plans on adaptation and this effort falls very much within that whole-of-government approach.

We have also shifted towards building new non-traditional whole-of-society approaches to solutions seeking and giving due respect to all those who are genuinely willing to work with this Administration. There is no natural constituency for climate resilience. We need to build it. And that building must be done out of trust and respect between all stakeholders across all sectors.

In this context, I am particularly glad to be part of the launch with FFP and the Canadian government today. As the former President of the National Resilience Council, I was asked to join the FFP’s Board by our good friend, former Secretary of Finance Sonny Dominguez. Like Secretary Sonny, I believed then, as I do now, that the FFP’s mandate offers a new and innovative opportunity towards socially inclusive, nature-positive, low carbon and climate resilient futures for our country.

To institutionalize nature-based solutions, we have already started to, in fact, craft the national policies towards NBS and we hope for your support in doing this, this effort.

Our development and bilateral partners have also played an important role in biodiversity conservation, climate action and the fight against plastic pollution. We wish to cite here that we are deeply grateful to the Government of Canada for its generous support through the projects funded by the GEF or the Global Environment Facility and for its development assistance to the Philippines which spans many decades.

I would also be remiss if I were not to acknowledge the support of the Government of the United States and the partnership with USAID. FFP’s genesis was built on US support through TFCA (Tropical Forest Conservation Act). Many of our protected areas and their communities have thrived under this program.

I am pleased to share here that we are formalizing a partnership with FFP that extends beyond this particular program. The partnership will include sharing of knowledge, expertise, and resources for the multi-dimensional and multi-disciplinary work in assessing our protected areas and in applying science and new tools to ensuring ecological integrity.

What decades of use, misuse, neglect and disruption have done cannot be recovered in months. But with honest, respectful and evidence-informed partnerships like these, we remain undaunted at the DENR. These allow the DENR in this Administration to know where to start and what must be done to protect our vast office – that is – 30 million hectares of land, 15 million hectares of classified forests, over 7 million hectares of Protected Areas, 36,000 kilometers of coastline and 2.2 (million) square kilometers of territorial seas.

We therefore look forward to working with FFP, its partners and the Government of Canada on PCP4NbS. We are targeting three wins: biodiversity conservation, climate change adaptation, gender equality and the resilience of communities in the context of natural resource management.

Thank you very much, and we are very excited to begin a new chapter in our journey to climate resilience together starting today. ###