BPI, WWF forge climate risk project

MANILA, Philippines - The Bank of the Philippine Islands has entered into a partnership with World Wide Fund for Nature-Philippines (WWF) on a climate risk mitigation project.  

This is actually the second joint venture of BPI and WWF. In 2008, WWF assisted BPI in participating in WWF’s Climate Savers Program designed to help reduce BPI’s carbon footprint and promote environmental consciousness among its employees.

 The project aims to generate city-specific socio-economic baseline data for selected cities, outside the National Capital Region, most likely to be adversely affected by climate change.

The four cities covered for this study are Cebu, Cotabato, Baguio and Iloilo. The selection of the cities was based mainly on the occurrence of storms, floods, drought and other extreme climate events during the past decade.

 Another crucial output of the project is a template on risk assessment associated with climate change.

The assessment will focus on three elements namely: Hazards or the climate-induced stresses on the selected cities; vulnerability or the physical attributes and socio-economic composition of the selected cities determining the degree of their susceptibility to the effects of climate change; and, adaptive capacity characterized by the selected cities’ institutional attributes that determine their degree of capability to respond and adapt to potential climate change impacts.

 BPI Foundation executive director Florendo G Maranan said that accord was the bank’s way of helping its partner communities address the adverse effects of climate change.

“Results of the study will be shared to the sectors at risk in each of the cities selected so they can better prepare for climate change disasters. The data from the study will also give the cities a more comprehensive basis for the policies and actions they will craft to mitigate the effects of climate change,” Maranan, who is also BPI’s chief environmental officer, added.