
A more vibrant tourism industry will then provide livelihood to residents of resettlement areas surrounding the airport, helping them to recover from the natural hazards that ruined their farms and houses. The airport - and the many benefits it entails - also reaffirms Albay's status as a global model for climate change adaptation. "This is a geo-strategic intervention," Albay Governor Joey Salceda said in a meeting with members of the Philippine Network of Environmental Journalists (PNEJ).
Salceda estimated that the tourism industry will provide livelihood for the roughly 10,000 "high risk" families who need to be relocated in permanent resettlement sites, mostly in Daraga. These families are now residing around Mayon Volcano - an active volcano that erupted 49 times in the last four centuries.
For Salceda, who was named "senior champion" of climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction by the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UN-ISDR), boosting Albay's tourism industry is less about raising revenues and more of defending the Albayenos from numerous natural disasters. "Albay is no longer about GDP blah blah blah. It is more about social desirability," he said….
Locator map of Albay by seav, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative CommonsAttribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license
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