BAGUIO CITY (PIA) — The Cordillera Regional Social Development Committee (RSDC) has endorsed a new community-driven climate adaptation project of the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) to the Investment Coordination Committee of the National Economic and Development Authority Board for approval.
The RSDC made the endorsement of the project dubbed “Panahon ng Pagkilos” to reduce the country’s vulnerability to climate change impact during its third quarter meeting on August 13, 2024.
The “Panahon ng Pagkilos is a community-led climate adaptation project to cater to areas with high poverty incidence, severe climatic hazards, and a significant proportion of indigenous population.
Manuel Ocana, Jr., Kapit-Bisig Laban sa Kahirapan-Comprehensive and Integrated Delivery of Social Services (KALAHI-CIDSS) Deputy Regional Manager, explained that the Panahon ng Pagkilos project contributes to the development objectives of the Philippine Development Plan and the Cordillera Regional Development Plan 2023-2028, by increasing the climate and disaster risk resilience of communities and mitigating natural, health, climate, and human-induced hazards to strengthen social protection It has the following components: strengthened Local Climate Change Action Planning, locally-led climate action implementation and investment, project monitoring and management, and contingent emergency response.
For CAR, the proposed project covers 620 barangays in 43 municipalities with 255,005 beneficiaries in the region. This climate adaptation project will be funded through a World Bank loan with counterpart from the national government and local government. Total cost amounts to PhP52.5B for the entire Philippines to be implemented from 2025 to 2030.
Ocana shared that the new initiative will be implemented through the agency’s KALAHI-CIDSS approach.
“The KALAHI-CIDSS is a community-driven development program wherein we make the communities as partners and treat them as partners for development rather than merely focusing on them as beneficiaries. This is the last year of implementation of the KALAHI-CIDSS, so, we are proposing for a new program to address climate change wherein we will be using the technology of KALAHI-CIDSS where community members are empowered to identify and address their community needs through the implementation of community subprojects,” Ocana said.
He cited that the KALAHI-CIDSS in the Cordillera has achieved a significant milestone, transforming communities and enhancing their resilience. The program has trained 88,166 community volunteers, and completed 4,413 completed sub-projects, and 606,399 number of actual household beneficiaries. With the gains and learnings from KALAHI-CIDSS,the communities have better adaptive capacity to withstand and recover from climate-related risks and disasters. **MAWC – PIA CAR
