'Filipino kids hit hard by climate change'

LUCKY BOYS Vice President Sara Duterte poses for a photo with two boys during the celebration of World Children’s Day on Sunday, Nov. 19, 2023, at the Quezon City Memorial Circle. PHOTO BY ISMAEL DE JUAN

By Ma. Reina Leanne Tolentino

VICE President and Education Secretary Sara Duterte said climate change has hit Filipino children hard, thus the need to address the crisis.

"This year, let us acknowledge the urgent need to address the climate crisis — a threat that disproportionately impacts children and threatens their prospects. The climate crisis is a child rights crisis that affects children's lives, education and health. And climate change is hitting Filipino kids hard."

She said typhoons cause flooding, landslides and storm surges in high-risk areas, affecting children.

The vice president said the country ranked first in the World Risk Index for 2022.

From 2016 to 2021, about 9.7 million Filipino children were displaced because of climate-change related events.

"These displacements caused increased diseases, respiratory illnesses and long-term mental health issues among children," she said.

"Disasters force children to miss school, affect their learning and their future. In rural communities, where agriculture is the main industry, these calamities generate food shortages and malnutrition," she added.

Duterte said children must be given "meaningful participation" in the fight against climate change.

"As adults, we must commit to walking the talk. We can start by reducing our carbon footprints and living sustainably. We must also promote programs that encourage kids to improve their community's disaster resilience. The upcoming COP28 presents a critical opportunity for the Philippine government to design and implement child-responsive climate action that prioritizes the needs and perspectives of children."

More deaths

Experts earlier warned that more people will die from extreme heat and that without action, the health of humanity "is at grave risk."

The Lancet Countdown, a major annual assessment carried out by leading researchers and institutions, said more common droughts will put millions at risk of starving, mosquitoes spreading farther than ever before will take infectious diseases with them, and health systems will struggle to cope with the burden.

Last year people worldwide were exposed to an average of 86 days of life-threatening temperatures, according to the Lancet Countdown study. Around 60 percent of those days were made more than twice as likely due to climate change, it said.

The number of people over 65 who died from heat rose by 85 percent from 1991-2000 to 2013-2022, it added.

"However, these impacts that we are seeing today could be just an early symptom of a very dangerous future," Lancet Countdown's executive director Marina Romanello said.

Under a scenario in which the world warms by two degrees Celsius by the end of the century — it is currently on track for 2.7 C — annual heat-related deaths were projected to increase 370 percent by 2050. That marks a 4.7-fold increase.

Around 520 million more people will experience moderate or severe food insecurity by mid-century, according to the projections.

And mosquito-borne infectious diseases will continue to spread into new areas. The transmission of dengue would increase by 36 percent under a 2.0 C warming scenario, according to the study.

WITH AFP

House panel OKs divorce bill

Albay First District Rep. Edcel Lagman. File Photo

By Ma. Reina Leanne Tolentino

March 22, 2023 120

WITH a vote of 12-0, the House Committee on Population and Family Relations on Tuesday approved the substitute bill on divorce.

"The approval of the bill on absolute divorce for eventual plenary debates assures that the country is now at the threshold of joining the universality of absolute divorce in the community of nations," Albay First District Rep. Edcel Lagman said in a statement.

Annulment, declaration of nullity and legal separation are the only available options in the Philippines.

Last month, the House committee approved in principle the proposed laws for divorce after it heard resource persons' positions on divorce.

"The template of the substitute bill is my House Bill 78, which is almost a replica of the bill approved on third and final reading by the House of Representatives during the 17th Congress. The approval of the same bill during the 18th Congress was stalled by the pandemic," Lagman said.

"While it is said that marriages are solemnized in heaven, the fact is some marriages plummet into hell because of human frailty and imperfections. The Divorce Act seeks to redeem couples, particularly the abused or abandoned wives, from infernal agony," he said.

"But it must be underscored that a law on absolute divorce is not for everybody. This act is for the exceptional circumstances of married couples who are marooned in toxic, dysfunctional and even abusive marriages, particularly for wives who suffer the torment of irreversibly dead marriages," Lagman said.

Under the bill, a divorce petition will undergo a judicial process where proof of the cause for the divorce is established and that the marriage has completely collapsed without any possibility of reconciliation. There will be a 60-day cooling-off period after the filing of a divorce petition "wherein the judge shall exert earnest efforts to reconcile the parties."

The cooling-off period will not apply in cases involving acts of violence against women and their children under the Anti-Violence Against Women and Their Children Act, or an attempt against the life of the other spouse or a common child or a child of the petitioner.

The cooling-off period would not be required for petitions under summary judicial proceedings.

Grounds for absolute divorce that may be subject to summary judicial proceedings will include separation for at least five years; when one of the spouses has contracted a bigamous marriage; when the spouses have been legally separated by judicial decree for at least two years; when one of the spouses has been sentenced to imprisonment for at least six years, even if subsequently pardoned; or when one of the spouses has undergone sex reassignment surgery or has transitioned into another sex.