ENVIRONMENT Secretary Maria Antonia Yulo-Loyzaga has unveiled a comprehensive 13-point roadmap bannered by an inventory of the country’s natural resources to prepare it against natural disasters resulting from climate change and to reduce its carbon footprint.

“We can only manage (them) better if we measure what we have,” said at the multi-stakeholder forum, ‘Towards a Greener Footprint’ in Iloilo City last week before local leaders, architects and urban land planners.

Local governments according to Loyzaga, must work together since these risks know no political boundaries.

At the same time, she stressed the need for an urban development plan that local governments must follow so their political neighbors can jointly benefit from their investments in well-being and quality of life.

On top of the list of the Secretary’s roadmap is the full greenhouse gas inventory which will identify how each sector contributes to the local government unit’s emissions and therefore establish goals for emissions reduction.

And to complement the inventory, she said; “It is important to design a strategy for emissions reduction that assigns the responsibility of achieving the targets per sector.”

Other points include, the inventory of each locality’s “green and blue assets,” adaptation of industry practices that advance building more with less; the need to conduct a metro-wide diversity inventory on flora and fauna; the importance of a “science-informed disaster resilience strategy” among others.

The environment secretary emphasized that climate resilience demands unity, strength and endurance.

“Designing cities for a greener footprint, therefore, must embrace, maintain and protect the cultural and social identity of a city,” she said.

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Joel dela Torre