The Department of Environment and Natural Resources is working on a national policy on nature-based solutions (NbS) to ensure that forest restoration, watershed protection and other ecosystem-based approaches become core strategies for climate adaptation and disaster risk reduction in the Philippines.
At a multi-stakeholder forum dubbed “Punla” (Seedling) in Quezon City on Tuesday, Sep-tember 9, DENR Assistant Secretary Noralyn Uy, who handles policy, planning, interna-tional affairs and climate change, said the DENR has started developing the NbS policy with support from United States Agency for International Development, and the United Na-tions Development Programme and other partner organizations.
“We want NbS to move from project-based initiatives into institutionalized, long-term gov-ernance practice,” Uy said.
Uy added the NbS policy will set Philippine-specific standards, monitoring systems, and incentives for both government and private sector adoption.
The move follows increasing recognition that traditional infrastructure alone cannot protect communities from intensifying floods, droughts and typhoons.
DENR Forest Management Bureau Assistant Director Ray Thomas Kabigting stressed that ecosystem restoration must be treated as an investment, not an optional activity.
He said that NbS will be a more comprehensive, strategic and synergized approach using nature as the main solution.
“The Philippines faces the harsh realities of a changing climate, with intense typhoons, prolonged droughts and a rising sea level threatening our community. Yet, we are discover-ing that our greatest strength lies not in fighting nature, but collaborating with it,” Kabigting said.
He said the country’s biodiverse ecosystem can offer powerful pathways to resilience that engineered infrastructure alone cannot match, especially during nature-based calamities and events.
He said that President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. himself, during the inauguration of an irriga-tion system in the Visayas on Sept. 5, said that the project will be sustainable because of the good forest cover in the headwaters.
“There are other solutions to these climate events and climate impacts other than infra-structure, and I think those are where nature-based solutions can be seriously talked about by policymakers, governance people, and also non-government organizations, civil socie-ty, ”Marcos said. (PNA)
