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REMEMBERING THIS November 10, 2013, file photo shows an aerial view of Tacloban City, after Typhoon Haiyan ravaged the region. AP/MALACAÑANG PHOTO BUREAU, RYAN LIM
It took years of greed and neglect to bring the planet to a point where super cyclones become common, and it will need decades more to mitigate the damage. Ground zero starts here.
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By Claudeth Mocon-Ciriaco
environmental destruction worsen at the backdrop of the climate emergency.” “In recalling the destruction brought by Yolanda and in consideration of COP26, we reiterate our call and prayer for climate justice. We hope and pray that people of goodwill eschew a global economic system where profit is prioritized over people. We pray and call for a shift to clean energy instead of monopolized fossil fuels, for rehabilitated and protected forests instead of large-scale mining, lives and livelihood of the people over big businesses,” Bishop Marigza said.
HE numbers are staggering, despite having been repeated so often, in stories of disasters around the globe, for the past eight years. At least 6,000 lives lost, another 30,000 people injured. Nine provinces in the Visayas devastated. And billions in public infrastructure, business and private property destroyed.
Can people ever tire of using superlatives in recalling Haiyan (local name Yolanda), that super cyclone that stunned the world in November 2013, and gave activists at the coincidental global climate change conference then a human face to illustrate the real toll of unbridled destruction of the planet? Perhaps they never will. After all, this year’s commemoration of Haiyan coincided, once more, with the COP26, or the conference of parties in Glasgow. It was marked, as expected, by a lot of fingerpointing and blame-tossing; by an abundance of rhetoric and solemn promises, even from those who in the past abetted the steady, speedy march of the planet’s warming, nearer an abyss where 1 degree of temperature rise can spell death.
Long road
THE words come easy in global forums like in Glasgow this week, but the real reckoning with disaster takes many years. Stressing that disaster recovery encompasses a range of phases, the Philippine Red Cross (PRC) said last week that restoring order in a community and regaining normalcy is not that easy. With all the accomplishments in helping rebuild communities and restore normalcy in millions of lives, PRC stressed that disaster recovery is a “marathon—not a sprint.”
That is why, according to PRC, almost a decade after Haiyan, they are still working hard and working tirelessly alongside their partners in helping communities build back stronger, healthier, and more resilient to future disasters. “Eight years ago today, one of the most powerful storms ever recorded in our planet’s history, and the most destructive in our nation’s history, made landfall in the Philippines, devastating nine of our provinces, Palawan, Aklan, Antique, Capiz, Cebu, Iloilo, Leyte, Eastern and Western Samar,” the PRC said in recalling how Typhoon Haiyan, locally known as Supertyphoon Yolanda, took more than 6,000 Filipino lives, injuring 30,000 individuals, destroying countless homes, bridges, schools, farms and businesses in its wake.
Climate justice
THE urgent plea for climate justice was marked in the comprehensive statement issued by the Philippine delegation head, Finance Secretary Carlos G. Dominguez III, who noted before world leaders that the Philippines is sinking four times faster than the global average rate, and yet accounts for a tiny fraction of global warming and pollution. It is time, Dominguez said, for the rich countries that have progressed at the expense of the rest to put
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Unparalleled challenge
IN this November 19, 2013, file photo, Typhoon Haiyan survivors pass by hundreds of victims lying in body bags on the roadside until forensic experts can register and bury them in a mass grave outside of Tacloban. The Philippine Red Cross led a humanitarian caravan of rescue equipment, ambulances, payloaders, water tankers and transport vehicles into the affected areas on November 11. The death and destruction was so horrific that PRC chairman Richard Gordon recalled telling the Partner Societies, “I brought you hear to save lives. I am sorry that now you have to pick up bodies.” AP
their money where their mouth is: climate financing for those unjustly impacted by sea-level rise and increasingly destructive weather disturbances. For militant churches, Haiyan’s anniversary is a “reminder to take a scaled-up action from the government and world leaders.” In a statement, the National Council of Churches in the Philippines (NCCP), the country’s biggest aggrupation of mainline Protestant and non-Roman Catholic churches, renewed its commitment to support disaster survivors and climate-vulnerable communities in time for the eighth anniversary of Haiyan destruction in 2013 and the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of Parties (COP26) in Glasgow, Scotland. “Eight years after the Typhoon Yolanda landfall, we still call for justice. We will never forget the people who died from that disaster which was exacerbated by climate
THE PRC recalled how, before, during and after Haiyan, it led the way in delivering aid to the vast multitude that was affected. Two years shy of a decade, PRC says its Haiyan operations remain unparalleled. “We are almost a decade after Yolanda, yet the Philippine Red Continued on A2
change and the grave negligence of both the past and present administrations,” NCCP said. “Since 2013, Typhoon Yolanda has shown how utterly devastating the climate crisis is. Since then, we have experienced typhoons and extreme weather events with almost the same destructive impacts as that of Typhoon Yolanda—a glaring indication that we no longer have to wait for a few more years to feel the climate crisis,” said NCCP General Secretary Bishop Reuel Norman O. Marigza. “These experiences should have pushed the government to scale up disaster mitigation, ecological protection, and climate-change adaptation. Regrettably, we haven’t seen any indication that our national government is now well prepared, as shown in the government’s inadequate responses to post-Yolanda calamities,” the bishop added. “If anything, we are in a much vulnerable state—as economic crisis and
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Source: BSP (November 12, 2021)