BACOLOD City – Leaders of the Catholic Church in Negros Occidental spearheaded the declaration of climate emergency in a forum which drew around 5,000 students from various schools at the University of St. La Salle (USLS) Coliseum here on Tuesday.
Dubbed the “House is on Fire: The Climate Change Emergency Forum,” the gathering unveiled the message of the declaration made by Bishops Patricio Buzon of the Diocese of Bacolod, Louie Galbines of the Diocese of Kabankalan and Gerardo Alminaza of the Diocese of San Carlos.
“We, the clergy and the faithful express our solidarity to the June 14, 2019 call of Pope Francis for a ‘climate change emergency,’” the declaration read.
The bishops noted the “Special Report on the Impacts of Global Warming” by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change cited by the pope that “we only have a decade to confine global warming, if not, we shall experience its catastrophic effects.”
“With this alarming data, we are one with Pope Francis in declaring that our ‘deliberations must go beyond mere explorations of what can be done, and should concentrate on what needs to be done, starting today,’” the declaration added.
Alminaza said things cannot be just “business as usual” as he called on Negrenses to be sensitive to those directly affected by the climate change catastrophe. “This is the importance of declaring a climate emergency, to make people aware of the emergency,” he added.
Reverend Father Chris Gonzales, director of the Diocese of Bacolod Social Action Center, said Bishop Buzon stated the campaign should not just end in a declaration or a statement.
“We need to take concrete actions. This is really a big challenge to all of us. The bishop is calling on everyone that we should emphasize education and concrete action to mitigate the effects of climate crisis,” Gonzales said.
Climate Change Commissioner Rachel Anne Herrera, one of the resource speakers, said she considers the gathering as an “event of convergence.”
“This launching is a local climate change effort that is an embodiment of activism in convergence with government policy and with the (efforts of the) church and civil society. It is a response to the urgency of the climate crisis,” she added.
Herrera said that in this week’s United Nations Climate Summit in New York, world leaders are uniting and sending messages of resolve and address the crisis by setting concrete targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 45-percent in 2030 and developing a carbon-neutral path for the world by 2050.
Meanwhile, the USLS Climate Emergency Task Force said they joined other institutions around the world in declaring a climate emergency as “an urgent response to the environmental disasters that threaten our generation and generations to come.”
“We all need all hands on deck – young and old, rich and poor alike – because we are all in the same boat called Planet Earth which is actually sinking,” task force head Alan Brillantes said.
Earlier, the Bacolod City Council passed a resolution declaring a climate emergency. Approved on July 17, the resolution was the first for a city in the Philippines.(With a report from PNA/PN)
