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| Philippine Climate Change Initiative Global Campaign for Climate Adaptability Launched |
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NEW YORK—The Philippines has taken center stage by pioneering a project on climate change adaptation aimed at building communities that would not only be sustainable but would also be prepared to deal with the adverse impacts of climate change.
The project, Designer Villages International Architecture Challenge, was launched at the Institute of International Education last week with leaders in the Filipino community in the East Coast joining participants who flew in from the Philippines.
The project aims to be the Philippine contribution to the celebration of the United Nations Year of Climate Change. It unites government agencies, different non-government organizations (NGOs), and academic institutions to launch this Philippine initiative on Climate Adaptation.
Illac Diaz, founder of MyShelter Foundation is collaborating with the Gawad Kalinga Community Development Foundation represented by GK founder Tony Meloto and the local government of Camarines Sur for this project, which is seeking through a global competition, a blueprint for low-income, disaster resilient and sustainable communities in the tropics.
The competition is the second phase of the global project in climate adaptability, which was initiated by Diaz in 2006, during his year as a Hubert H. Humphrey Fellow in MIT’s Special Program for Urban and Regional Studies.
"I feel so blessed to be working with my partners right now, and through this global contest, we hope the best minds in the world will come up with sustainable community projects which we can then replicate, not just in the Philippines, but wherever it is needed," Diaz, lead proponent of the global adaptability challenge, told the Asian Journal.
According to the Global Climate Index, the Philippines is one of the ten most afflicted countries in the world in terms of impact in the number of lives and property lost as a result of damage due to climate, and these are mainly in the form of increasing intensities of typhoons visiting the islands annually. This is due mainly to the high vulnerability of rural areas and very little capacity for adaptation (attributed to poverty and lack of awareness on the rising dangers) of the people at risk.
The Designer Villages Challenge will focus on selected climate hotspots in the Philippines, specifically Camarines Sur, a province located in the Bicol region that is frequently devastated by typhoons.
The project aims to bring together local and international architects to find solutions for low-cost residential building designs in the developing world, especially those that constantly face natural disasters like typhoons and earthquakes.
The winning designs of mater plans for low-income communities of 30 houses will each be awarded monetary prizes. The top three village designs will be built by Gawad Kalinga, the largest and most active non-government slum upgrading and rural community builders in Asia. GK will also be using the new blueprint for villages in critically vulnerable areas.
The Manila Observatory, a private non-stock, non-profit, scientific research institution, recently completed a study on the future challenges of climate in the Naga region, which indicate the growing intensity and shifting typhoon pattern to the south of the archipelago (Visayas and Mindanao) with the path affecting thousands of unprepared communities unused to these types of storms.
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