I Am Blogie

Due to the recent — and enduring — devastation brought about by Ondoy (a.k.a. Typhoon Ketsana), in the news now, we see pleas for more awareness of environmental issues. We read about government being asked to be more rigorous and meticulous in public infrastructure planning, as well as in granting land development projects to real estate corporations.

It’s been said time and again, hindsight is always 20/20 vision. But now we have to try and look at the future. These appeals must be heeded by all concerned, because tens of thousands of people have already lost their lives to nature’s wrath. Due, in significant part, to massive oversight on the part of our decision-makers. Our past leaders blatantly disregarded environment-related problems, and now we are paying for their mistakes.

Our government must indeed get down to brass tacks and tackle the obvious issues: improper land use, clogging of waterways, garbage disposal, pollution….

But, amid all of these calls for government action, we must not forget that each of us has a responsibility as well. No one is free from blame: each of us has contributed to the tons of trash that find their way to rivers, oceans, valleys, natural parks. All of us have been unmindful of what progress has made us become: wasteful.

Enough said. Let us do our part then. Let’s recycle what we can. Let’s minimize waste, and do our part in saving the environment. And somehow, possibly, save the future from even worse natural calamities.

As everyone probably knows, typhoons do not hit Davao at all. But that doesn’t mean we don’t experience flooding in some vital parts of the city. For years and years, flooding — due to bad drainage and sewage systems — has been a malignant problem, and nothing seems to be happening to completely address it.

We might not have typhoons or storms in Davao, but the infrastructure problems in Marikina and other parts of Metro Manila do exist here. Therefore Dabawenyos must not be complacent nor myopic: the kind of devastation caused by Typhoon Ondoy in Metro Manila is not so far-fetched as to be improbable in Davao.

Flooding in Ecoland subdivision

We have seen our share of flooded streets, and even kind of expect it in certain areas when heavy rains fall. No killer floods so far in recent memory, but at the rate our city is developing — ergo, generating garbage and wreaking havoc on nature — imbalance in our ecology could bring on a deluge we most probably won’t soon forget.

The good news is, there are champions within local government who are espousing awareness and preparedness. One of them is Councilor Leonardo Avila III, who has raised the red flag of climate change and its destructive effects. Avila chairs the committee on the environment in the Sangguniang Panlungsod. He has called for the revisiting of Davao City’s land use plan and the taking of climate change into serious consideration as a factor in development.

Much like the case of Marikina’s land development, Davao is mired in chaotic zoning and city planning. Looking at a map of the city, one clearly sees the hodge-podge arrangement of streets and public infrastructure. More serious than that, our watersheds, catchment areas (natural formations, such as valleys, that protect against flooding), not to mention hills and forests, have already been tampered with; ergo, making our city even more vulnerable to nature’s calamities.

Dabawenyos should rest assured that we have highly-trained and effective response teams here: the 911 emergency response center, the fire brigades, the local chapter of the National Disaster Coordination Council. However, prevention is still way better than restoration.

Due to what transpired in Metro Manila recently, we must, from now on, keep in mind how vulnerable we are. I totally disagree with the sitting president’s declaration of a nationwide state of calamity (much more with the proposed length of time it’s supposed to be in effect), but we mustn’t put it out of our minds that our safety and prosperity could be at risk if we do not prepare ourselves and our community. Again, we must not be complacent. We — the government and the private sector — must work hand-in-hand to plan well ahead, and get the plan implemented, in order to prepare for any calamitous eventuality that Mother Nature might throw at us.

[Media Release]

Designer Villages Challenge: A Global Campaign for Climate Adaptability

(Manila, Philippines) — The Philippines is pioneering a project on climate change adaptation aimed at building communities that would not only be sustainable but also be prepared to deal with the adverse impacts of climate change.

The project, Designer Villages Challenge, is the country’s contribution to the celebration of the United Nations Year of Climate Change.

Led by Provincial Governor of Camarines Sur L. Ray Villafuerte, the Gawad Kalinga Community Development Foundation and the My Shelter Foundation, the project unites government agencies, different non-government organizations (NGOs), and academic institutions to launch this Philippine initiative on Climate Adaptation.

According to the Global Climate Index, Philippines is one of the ten most afflicted countries in the world in terms of impact in the number of lives and property lost as a result of damage due to climate, and these are mainly in the form of increasing intensities of typhoons visiting the islands annually. This is due mainly to the high vulnerability of rural areas and very little capacity for adaptation (attributed to poverty and lack of awareness on the rising dangers) of the people at risk.

These upcoming humanitarian disasters, and potentially mass migration, will lead to a high state of conflict and insecurity for the 70 percent rural and 40 percent poor living below the poverty line.

The Designer Villages Challenge will focus on selected climate hotspots in the Philippines, Camarines Sur, a province located in the Bicol region that is frequently devastated by typhoons.

The Manila Observatory, a private non-stock, non-profit, scientific research institution, recently completed a study on the future challenges of climate in the Naga region, which indicate the growing intensity and shifting typhoon pattern to the south of the archipelago (Visayas and Mindanao) with the path affecting thousands of unprepared communities unused to these types of storms.

The study has inspired the building of a redesigned low-income community which will be the new blueprint of how people in the vulnerable coastal and rural areas and cities can successfully cope with impacts of climate variability. The knowledge generated from the study will also facilitate the development of policies that address these humanitarian challenges.

Part of the campaign is a competition that would invite architects and planners to contribute to rural adaptability to climate change impacts in the form of architectural resiliency to strong typhoon, winds and heavy rains. It is an “Architects Wanted Ad” to encourage the best minds in the world to sketch up new blueprints for low income (US$2,000 below) housing that is both disaster resistant and sustainable.

Capacity building in the present social networks such as community, non-government, and government organizations involved in these areas will allow a shift into post-disaster mitigation to preparing ahead of the storm.

The main hypothesis of this project is having safer structures ahead of time that will lead to less injury, number of climate refugees, and loss of life and property.

The project’s main partner and beneficiary is Gawad Kalinga, the largest and most active non-government slum upgrading and rural community builders in Asia who will be using the new blueprint for villages in critically vulnerable areas designs. The top three winners of the competition will win monetary awards. In addition, all top three designs will be built, in partnership with three separate prototype master-planned communities of 30 houses each as envisioned by their authors.

The competition brief, which would explain how the villages will be designed based on the key points of climate change challenges, data on the site and province, among others, is still being finalized by the United Architects of the Philippines, Gawad Kalinga and My Shelter Foundation.

The first press launch will be at the Institute of international Education (IIE) where Illac Diaz, a Hubert Humphrey Fellow and lead proponent of the global adaptability challenge, and Tony Meloto, founder of Gawad Kalinga, will be speaking before invited guests from the United Nations, architecture magazine editors and institutes for architecture to inform them of the current Philippine challenges for climate adaptability. He will be accompanied by a delegation of Philippine governors, mayors, and climate experts who would like to call attention to the Philippine Imperative for Climate Adaptation.

WHAT IS THE DESIGNER VILLAGES CHALLENGE?

The global Designer Villages Challenge is a powerful collaboration of service and leadership between Gawad Kalinga and My Shelter Foundation in the bid to provide innovative housing and community solutions that empower people and are adaptive to the present challenges of climate change.

In January of this year, the Philippines’ largest low-cost community builders, Gawad Kalinga, mounted a local design competition, challenging senior architecture and interior design students to raise the bar of excellence for GK communities around the country and the world by harnessing their talents and skills into building the most beautiful, environment-friendly and sustainable GK villages for the poorest of the poor who otherwise cannot afford their services. May 8, 2009 was the last day of submission of entries and awarding will be in September of this year.

Similarly and exactly the year before, My Shelter Foundation together with its partners, Gov. L Ray Villafuerte, the National Disaster Coordinating Council, the Private Sector Disaster Management Network and the United Architects of the Philippines mounted an international competition with the vision of culling emergent technologies from the world’s architects who can create sustainable new design solutions for schools to improve the overall learning conditions of the children, and to revolutionize the blueprint in making the structure resilient to strong and typhoons. The winning design is a sustainable bamboo school by Eleena Jamil of Malaysia which began construction at the Nato Elementary School area last May 15, 2009.

This year, these two engines for changing Architecture For low-income communities, one for better sustainable design and one for disaster resiliency, together with Gov. Lray Villafuerte, the United Architects of the Philippines and other government and non-government partners, a new challenge in 2009 is presented to local and international architects, designer and planners when they are brought together through a competition platform to find solutions to the problem of obsolete, low-cost residential building designs in the developing word in the midst of climate change. It is hoped that a broader international network base will bring in around 2,000 design entries to complete a full master plan of a climate resilient community for rural areas of the country. The scope of the design will be based on master planning a low-income community of 30 houses based on affordability (<$2,000 USD), typhoon and earthquake resistance, sustainable development, innovative construction technology, scalability and flexibility of use.

This project is in honor of the 90th year anniversary of the Fulbright Program and the 30th year anniversary of the Hubert Humphrey Program. The Fulbright Program promotes leaders who unite the world through a dialogue of peace and understanding through educational exchange.

The Designer Villages Challenge will have its 1st press launch on June 16, 2009 at 4:30PM at the Institute of International Education at the United Nations Plaza in New York. The following will be speaking: Allan E. Goodman, President, Institute of International Education (IIE), Consul General Cecilia B. Rebong, Tony Meloto of Gawad Kalinga, Governor Lray Villafuerte of Camarines Sur, Philippines and Illac Diaz, founder of My Shelter Foundation and alumnus of the Hubert H. Humphrey Fellowship Program.