Cambodian DRR managers to study best practices at Albay's Climate Change Academy

LEGAZPI CITY, Nov. 6 (PIA/PGA) --Fifteen members of the Cambodian Joint Climate Change Initiative (JCCI) are visiting Albay this week to study in brief the province’s valuable strategies on climate change adaptation (CCA) and disaster risk reduction (DRR).

Albay Gov. Joey Salceda said the visitors will be in the province for five days starting November 5, for a learning exchange with the Climate Change Academy and to share approaches on coping mechanisms through community based organizations.

The group will have a meeting with Salceda at the Climate Change Academy of Albay where they will be provided an opportunity to personally hear the governor discuss Albay’s holistic approach to CCA and DRR, which had elevated the province to a world class category in the campaign on climate adaptation.

Albay is UN’s global model in in CCA and DRR and Salceda had been proclaimed its Senior Global Champion and spokesman, and now sits as director of the Green Climate Fund of the United Nations Framework Convention on climate Change representing Asia.

The province had since then become a venue of many seminars and trainings, and visits from CCA and DRR practitioners from other countries, and specially most recently after the establishment of the the Climate Change Academy at the Bicol University, in this city.

The academy is first of its kind in Asia and was also a brainchild of Salceda, who pioneered CCA and DRR in local governance and made popular the ‘zero casualty’ and ‘preemptive evacuation’ strategies which has since then adopted by the national government and other LGUs .

The visiting group is organized particularly under the Joint Climate Change Initiative of Capacity Development of Cambodian Non-Government Organizations and funded by Forum Syd of the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency.

The visit is coordinated by the Ateneo School of Government, led by Jessica Asne Dator –Bercilla who coordinated the learning exchange.

Bercilla in a recent letter to Salceda, said the visitors will have sessions on: Climate Change Legal Framework, Programmes and Approaches in the Philippines at the Oriental Hotel; Learning Exchange with the Climate Change Academy of Albay at the Bicol University; share experiences on various projects of community based organizations.

The group is set visit the island town of Rapu-rapu to learn how it had coped with disasters, and ‘give them a chance to reflect on the challenges of living in small islands’ .

The Cambodians are also scheduled to visit Sorsogon City for a visit on a community based adaptation program and in Bulan town, Sorsogon for a session on national resource management. (MAL-PIA5/PGAlbay)