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Bank of the Philippine Islands has entered into a partnership with the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF-Philippines) on a Climate Risk Adaptation Project. The MOA signing was held on 24 August 2010 at the BPI Head Office Building, Makati City.
BPI was represented by Aurelio Montinola III, BPI President; Florendo Maranan, BPI Foundation Executive Director; and Ma. Carmencita Sayo, Head of BPI’s Business Continuity and Systems Quality Assurance Management.
Meanwhile, WWF-Philippines was represented by Jose Ma. Lorenzo Tan, WWF-Philippines President; Reggie Olalia, Head of its Marketing and Corporate Relations; and Kimberly Ang, Corporate Relationship Manager.
This is the second joint venture of BPI and WWF. Earlier 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 Climate Risk Adaptation 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, Davao, 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 expected output of the project is a template on risk assessment associated with climate change. The assessment will focus on three elements: 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.
“This is BPI’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.” Mr. Florendo Maranan, Executive Director for BPI Foundation and BPI’s Chief Environmental Officer, said.
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