The Senate agriculture and food committee pushed yesterday for a radical shift in the agriculture sector from conventional farming to agroecology as the Philippines was labeled as the number one country in the world affected by climate change in 2013.
The shift, according to Cynthia A. Villar, committee chairperson, was spurred by a report of a German think tank, Germanwatch, submitted to the United Nations (UN) Framework Convention on Climate Change in Peru.
To support its new study, Germanwatch said the massive damage brought by typhoon Haiyan or Yolanda is an important case in point at the Global Climate Risk Index that was unveiled in the Peru convention.
The two other countries which suffered most from the effects of climate change last year are Cambodia and India.
In a speech at the Southeast Asian Regional Center for Graduate Study and Research in Agriculture (SEARCA) Agriculture and Development Seminar Series (ADSS) in Los Banos, Laguna, Villar said there is more reason for the Philippines to focus on agro-ecology since it provides a number of environment-related benefits, aiming for environmental sustainability.
