by Danica Marie F. Supnet and Janssen Mozar Martinez
Today is the second and last day of ICSC’s Knowledge Exchange on the People’s Survival Fund, which contained the bulk of the concept brainstorming and proposal writing. Almost all of the officials which participated in our writeshop – hailing from fourteen local government units (LGUs) from Benguet and Mountain Province – recognize that certain manifestations in their environment are indeed climate-related impacts, which negatively affect their lives and livelihoods.
Along with their recognition of these climate impacts, the results presented during the workshop are comparably more comprehensive and sensitive to the planning process, which we attribute to the careful selection of workshop participants, which include a mayor, planning officers and disaster risk reduction (DRR) officers. In the process, the participants were able to present specific vulnerabilities in their area as well was identify their priority initiatives based on these vulnerabilities.
This latest writeshop recognizes the importance of the idea of an effective climate finance (CF) ecosystem. The idea of a CF ecosystem entails that instead of a proponent LGU working on its own, information sharing with fellow LGUs, state universities and colleges, businesses, and people’s organizations helps them craft well-honed proposals that can be submitted to climate finance mechanisms such as the PSF.
The established partnership of Benguet State University with the LGUs through their community extension programs added much value to the workshop. Our BSU-based partners in our ongoing research project on the slow-onset impacts of climate change provided very important inputs to the local officials. In return, the professors and researchers have now become more familiar with the proposal writing procedure, which further legitimizes their positions as a potential project implementation partner.
This scenario of reciprocity between a local academic institution and LGUs is what the CF ecosystem aims to mainstream in the process of accessing climate finance here in the country.
As we end the activity here today in Benguet State University, we are hopeful that the local government officials gained a clearer understanding on how to access the PSF. This scenario of reciprocity between a local academic institution and local government unit is what the climate finance ecosystem aims to mainstream in the process of accessing climate finance in the Philippines.
