Science at the forefront of climate action
by Danica Marie Supnet; Photos: Vinai Dithajohn/ICSC This year’s Asia-Pacific Climate Week was held on the first week of September at the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific in Bangkok, Thailand. This is one of the many conferences of the international climate community to convene experts, advocates, practitioners and government representatives to catalyze climate action regionally. We in the Institute for Climate and Sustainable Cities (ICSC) took the call and organized a side event on Southeast Asian Resilience in Agriculture and Biodiversity with scientists from the Southeast Asian region (SEA). It was an overwhelming [...]
Linking human mobility to climate change
Text and photos by Danica Marie Supnet Last June, I was fortunate to be part of the Philippine delegation of the global programme on Human Mobility in the Context of Climate Change (HMCCC) to Germany, where we joined a three-day working group discussion and an international conference. The German Development Agency (GIZ), together with Adelphi, brought in stakeholders from three pilot areas – the Philippines, the Caribbean, and the Pacific Islands – to discuss challenges and opportunities related to human mobility, including planned relocation, human security, migration policies, disaster risk management, and climate change. The Philippine team was led by [...]
Tracking climate finance in Vietnam
by Danica Marie Supnet I recently went to Vietnam for the first time to convene a three-day skillshare on the Adaptation Finance Accountability Initiative (AFAI) with a few colleagues from ICSC. AFAI is an international research initiative tracking how climate finance committed by donor countries and organizations has been received and utilized by recipient countries such as the Philippines. Established in 2013 by Oxfam America, World Resources Institute, and Overseas Development Institute, this Southern-led project was piloted in the Zambia, Nepal, Uganda, and the Philippines, where ICSC was the Philippine lead. Despite AFAI’s end in 2015, ICSC not only sustained [...]
Understanding slow-onset climate impacts on a local scale
by Danica Marie Supnet It is easy to blame the occurrence of typhoons, heavy rainfall, or prolonged drought to climate change, but it’s never easy to understand why these phenomena happen and why we need to know about them. It is easy to say what the communities and government should do to adapt to these phenomena, but often the work is not done in a proactive way. It is easy to say “it’s all about science”, then take a step back and leave these all for scientists to figure out. Working with climate policy analysts, scientists and advocates changes this [...]
Strengthening local partnerships through the climate finance ecosystem
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 [...]