CLIMATE Change Commission Secretary Heherson T. Alvarez underscored the importance of architects and engineers in promoting sustainable buildings, or green buildings, to boost the country’s chances of achieving its ambitious targets to reduce carbon-dioxide (CO2) emissions by 2030.
At a gathering of architects and engineers dubbed Green Breakthrough 2018 at Conrad Hotel in Pasay City over the weekend, Alvarez said: “As architects and engineers, your role is to help this country achieve its commitment in the Paris Agreement to reduce 70 percent of our CO2 emissions by 2030 and help maintain global warming by 1.5˚C or below. Your sustainable designs provide one of the most vital solutions to mitigate the impacts of climate change.”
Organized by the Philippine Green Building Initiative (PGBI), the event gathered architects, engineers and other stakeholders in the local construction industry to tackle the latest green building designs and initiatives, among others. PGBI promotes sustainable construction in the Philippines.
A former senator and secretary of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), Alvarez said the leading climate scientists of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have revealed in their latest United Nations special report that global warming is worsening and occurring more rapidly than expected.
“In fact,” Alvarez said, “these climate- change experts reminded the world that we only have 12 years to limit the warming of the Earth to 1.5˚C to avoid the catastrophic impacts of climate change.”
Under the 2015 Paris Agreement, 195 countries agreed to keep global temperatures well below 2˚C.
However, he said the latest IPCC report said that warming should be limited to 1.5˚C or below by 2030.
The IPCC warned that warming of 2˚C would have a disastrous impact. The half-a-degree difference will significantly worsen the risks of droughts, typhoons, floods, heat waves and poverty for hundreds of millions of people, Alvarez said.
The .5˚C additional warming will completely wipe out the corals, leading to extreme hunger for the world population, he added, citing the IPCC report.
According to Alvarez, the task of keeping the warming at 1.5˚C will be most challenging.
“The Asian Development Bank has also identified the Philippines as one of the Asian countries that will double its carbon dioxide emissions by 2035. There is a need for rapid phaseout of fossil fuels, particularly coal. There has to be a massive, drastic and immediate shift to renewables in our energy systems and the eradication of emissions from our transport systems and industrial sector,” he said in a statement released through the PGBI.
Alvarez said the building sector accounts for 36 percent of the Philippines’s total energy consumption, next to the transport sector, and produces 35 percent to 40 percent of carbon-dioxide emissions. The McKinsey Global Institute, which has studied the issue on a global basis, estimates that four of the five most cost-effective measures taken to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions involve building efficiency.
“Your roles, therefore, as builders of sustainable buildings are critical for the survival of mankind. I challenge you to be in the frontline in our battle to curb carbon emissions,” Alvarez said.
Meanwhile, Undersecretary Analiza R. Teh of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources said that, while the Philippines remains committed to its promise to reduce by 70 percent its carbon emission between 2020 and 2030, it is more focused on strengthening the adaptive capacity of vulnerable communities.
“Our programs and activities are geared toward strengthening our adaptive capacity, to ensure the survival of our vulnerable communities,” Teh told the BusinessMirror in a telephone interview on October 9, adding the decision was made in light of the urgency of enhancing adaptive capacities and strengthening resiliency in response to climate-change impacts.
“It is more on adaptation than mitigation,” Teh said.