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| (Many thanks Liza of boholrepublic.com for the picture) |
Recent debates on climate change has started to
refocus measures from global and national playing fields to local spheres, with
the belief that “the “local” is also an important site in governing global
environmental problems” (Betsill and Burkeley 2006). The Stern Report in 2007 has
clearly indicated that communities need to be empowered so that they can
actively contribute in vulnerability assessment and implementation of
adaptation. Further, it argues that climate change needs to be incorporated
into development planning at all scales, levels, and sectors (Stern 2007).
The recent experience of Jagna, Bohol, where a tornado destroyed the homes of more than a hundred families takes to the fore the
issue of how prepared are we as a province, and the Philippines, as an
archipelagic country, in meeting the challenges of a changing climate and the
threat of natural disasters. While Jagna
has its own Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Plan and an active and
functional committee, there seems to be gaps in preparedness and in detection,
things that education and scientific advancements may be able to deal with.
I take the view that the local leaders are critical
actors in drafting, implementing, and evaluating development programs that
address both strategic and short-term considerations of local government
units. How they perceive the necessity
and the urgency of a policy agenda or a program of interventions is important
to ensure that not only these are incorporated in local development plans but
are also correspondingly allocated with development funds. However, their perceptions of necessity and
urgency are grounded on how much they know about a particular issue and
concern.
In a review of local government plans, programs, and
annual budgets in the municipalities of the
Bohol province in the Philippines in 2008 (Canares
2008), it was evident that the challenge of climate change was hardly responded
to by local government units for two reasons – a very raw and shallow
understanding of the causes, effects, and possible local solutions to climate
change, and the pessimism that such a global solution can be addressed by local
actors and actions.
However, very recently, climate change has become one
of the pressing agenda bannered by the provincial local government units. I surveyed the reasons for the sudden shift in so short a time.
Local elections in the Philippines were held in May
2010, approximately two years after the first study was conducted. This turning point is critical for two particular
reasons. Local elections are
opportunities for the local electorate to choose a new set of leaders for both
executive and legislative branches. In
this case, there may be ‘changing of guards’, where new politicians are elected
to public office and would probably indicate new sets of priorities. The other point which makes elections
important in the context of this study, is the fact that as earlier indicated,
the new set of officers will craft a new local development plan that spans
their term of service (the Executive-Legislative Agenda, as opposed to the
midterm Comprehensive Development Plan). As such, the possibility, or impossibility
that climate change agenda will be incorporated into local development plans
will in part be determined by results of the elections – whether newly-elected
or newly-installed officials will put it as part of its priorities.
A review of local development plans was again
conducted in the last quarter of 2010, and the review, this time, focused not
on the CDP, but on the ELA which was then recently formulated. The review was
limited only to 29 municipalities, representing 60% of the total number of municipalities
in the province, and the same municipalities where CDPs were reviewed in the 2008
study. The review indicated that 6 out of the total plans reviewed mentioned
climate change. These municipalities are geographically located in the coastal
areas of the province, or had a number of islands as part of its municipal
coverage. Out of the 29 plans, 12
mentioned the word disaster or calamities. It is in the latter language, that
climate change is incorporated into the local planning process. It is to be
noted that the 6 municipalities where climate change is mentioned in the text
are included in the 18 municipalities that mentioned disaster or calamities in
their planning document. As such, it can be said that 41% of the municipalities
in the province incorporated climate change concerns in the local development
plants. However, words as mitigation and adaptation never entered into the
lexicon of these documents.
It does seem that local stakeholders, and more
particularly local chief executives and legislators become increasingly
concerned on climate change issues, more particularly those revolving around
the themes of disasters and calamities. But was this the case? Or was it a
change in leadership in the municipalities covered that caused the sudden
shift?
The study revealed that while recent events in the
global spheres (e.g. tsunami, flooding, hurricane), accentuated by local
experiences (e.g. landslide, typhoons, flooding, increasingly warm weather, and
more recently the Jagna experience), made lawmakers and other stakeholders
realize the exigency of the climate change phenomenon, it is the top-down
elements that hastened climate change incorporation into local development
plans. The passage of a law and the
implementation of the project made possible the inclusion of climate change issues,
more particularly in the frame of disaster risk reduction, to local development
plans. I would argue that for mainstreaming climate change to development plans
of local government units, three challenges need to be addressed – information,
participation, and ownership.
The results of this study, done over two periods
resonate with the results of a similar study conducted at the level of national
government. Lasco et al pointed out that the lack of mainstreaming of climate
change issues in national development plans is caused by the fact that “national
priorities are biased towards more pressing concerns” (or the challenge of prioritization)
and that there is “the pervasive lack of awareness on the impacts of climate change
to sustainable development” (2008:17) (or the challenge of information). It is important that these challenges are
addressed so that ownership of the processes and the expected results will be
achieved at the local level.
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