SENR Keynote Speech | ACB-MO Partnership Launch
A Roundtable Discussion with the Philippine Media on Biodiversity and Climate Change
2 October 2023 | Quezon City

Good morning to all.

It’s my pleasure and honor to be with you here today to witness the coming together of experts from both fields – climate change and biodiversity – for the official launch of the ASEAN Climate and Biodiversity Initiative or ACBI, a partnership between the Manila Observatory and the ASEAN Centre for Biodiversity (ACB).

Likewise I am very happy to witness the keen group of the Philippine media who are here participating in our roundtable discussion later on.

This is the first of its kind in the country and in ASEAN as well. In this time of the climate emergency, working in silos is no longer effective. To abate the crisis, we must pursue transdisciplinary collaboration and action, and engage stakeholders in climate action.

I failed to recognize, if I may, one of our research fellows at the Observatory previously also, Dr. Emma Porio, very important in terms of the social aspect of adaptation as well.

The Philippines is among the most vulnerable to climate-related weather events, and has really been on the top of the list of disaster risk rankings. I should say at the DENR, we have adopted a new perspective because of our megadiverse nature as a country. We are part of the global climate solution, and we have much to offer both to our country as well as the rest of the world.

As highlighted in the latest IPCC report, we know that adverse impacts to climate change will intensify overtime. Unless we are prudent and immediately act and in a concerted fashion, our fates are sealed. We need to address climate change decisively by ensuring resilience, sustainable development, poverty reduction, low-carbon economic growth, all happened to our country. And very importantly, in order to do this, we need to protect, enhance, and value our biodiversity as a source of nature-based solutions to our crisis.

Climate change and biodiversity have a causal nexus where one directly influences the other but in many different ways, and I should say that in conversations with different development country representatives in both the Kunming negotiations as well as in the COP, we have asked developed countries to recognize the common but differentiated responsibility in the documentation. The unwillingness to some countries we have had to deal with, but we’ve actually asked them to accept that climate change, biodiversity, and human development are inextricably linked, and therefore, we assume as implied, that there are responsibilities, and accountabilities in that linkage.

According to a study, our biodiversity in Southeast Asia is gravely imperilled by massive habitat modifications, forest fires, and the overexploitation of wildlife. An estimated 24-63% of endemic species, and this is particularly important for us in the Philippines in the ASEAN region are actually at risk of extinction. This represents a good number of vertebrate species including 66% of the region’s birds and 85% of the region’s mammals, as well as a good number of species of vascular plants. In addition, our reefs have been estimated to lose between 70-90% globally at a 1.5 degree, and of course, more at a 2 degree centigrade global warming. Studies have also noted the climate-related local extinctions are significantly higher in tropical species than in temperate species.

When I was here at the Manila Observatory, we had the opportunity to gain some knowledge on the science of climate and disaster risk. I wish to acknowledge the work that was done on CORDEX by both Dr. Faye Cruz and Dr. Gemma Narisma, both of whom have been instrumental in producing the data sets in the Philippines, and for collaboration in the Southeast Asian region. From a few institutions, CORDEX started with as few as seven, I would say, institutions, and today there are more than 14 institutions including research institutions beyond the Asian region that have actually partnered on this experiment. So we’re very grateful to both Doc Gemma and Doc Faye for actually spearheading all of this work.

We sought to bring scientific approaches to bare on sound downstream impacts recognizing complex challenges on the ground. This entailed responding to the needs of various stakeholders ranging from national to local government, academe, humanitarian, multilateral and development agencies, corporate foundations and different members of the private sector, as well as non-government organizations.

We realized that science must influence policy, decision-making, planning, and governance.

At the DENR, we continue the advocacies of resilient and sustainable development focusing on the environment and climate nexus. What is important to us at this point is what the questions are, not so much as what the answers inevitably will be. So that process of exploration and exquisition if you will, interrogation of the different social, physical, cultural, anthropological impacts of climate change are among the concerns of the DENR as much as the impacts on the environment and the different ecosystems.

Before I end, I’d like to congratulate both the Manila Observatory and the ASEAN Centre for Biodiversity for this groundbreaking collaboration.

The Philippine media who are here with us today are witnesses to this whole-of-society, and hopefully at some point, a whole-of-government approach. We are here to actually deliver the message in terms of the evidence that will inform policy and action. This approach is possible, and if we can find effective solutions to this more pressing and complex issues to the world if we work together.

Thank you very much, and good morning.