Three Philippine towns pilot sites for climate change initiatives

News Today (Philippines): Three towns in Iloilo, including Janiuay, Pototan and Dumangas, are among the eight municipalities chosen as pilot sites for developing models of climate change-resilient communities in agricultural and forested areas. The Department of Environment and Natural Resources said the four-pronged $4.97-million project, under the Philippine Climate Change Adaptation Project Phase I (PhilCCAP1), will used updated scientific data on climate risk management.

Environment Secretary Ramon Paje said the project seeks to address vulnerabilities of the agricultural and natural resource sectors to climate change as it recognizes the need to strengthen biodiversity conservation and forest protection efforts to bring down poverty especially in the rural communities…

…PhilCCAP1 will operate on a platform that will develop and demonstrate climate change adaptation strategies in the agriculture and natural resources management, using five core elements, namely, climate proofing irrigation infrastructure, enhancing delivery and effectiveness of extension services for farm-level climate risk management; pilot-testing the feasibility of weather index-based crop insurance; strengthening climate change resilience through improved management of protected areas; and improving the access, especially in the agriculture and natural resources sectors, to more reliable scientific information that would enable more rapid and accurate decision making for climate risk management….

Locator map of Iloilo by seav (Magalhães?), Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 License