CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY – Five Mindanao cities, including Cagayan de Oro, were chosen to qualify for this year’s One Planet City Challenge (OPCC), an environmental initiative organized by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF).
Aside from Cagayan de Oro, the organizers also selected the cities of Davao, Dipolog, Tagum, and Zamboanga to qualify for the challenge.
Joining the challenge for the first time are Baguio, Legazpi, Ormoc, San Fernando in La Union, and Vigan.
The addition of five Philippine cities to the OPCC roster, said Imee Bellen, WWF-Philippines One Planet Cities Project manager, is a welcome sign of a more sustainable future.
“Also, we are grateful to the 11 recurring city participants that chose to continue their engagement as this means that OPCC provides greater encouragement to strengthen their commitments. We honor what these cities have achieved, and we look forward to working with them over the next two years,” Bellen said.
Participating cities, WWF said, will submit reports detailing their respective emissions, as well as their plans and goals for climate action in their localities.
“These plans will be checked by a panel of experts against a methodology derived from the Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5 °C,” the organization said.
The submitted documents by the contenders will then undergo an assessment framework to evaluate the city’s climate targets and their alignment with the Paris Agreement.
According to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Paris Agreement is a legally binding international treaty on climate change adopted by 196 parties in 2015 and entered into force in November 2016.
Its goal is to limit global warming to well below 2, preferably to 1.5 degrees Celsius, compared to pre-industrial levels.
WWF said the participants will also receive guidance on the most effective actions to help them along this “decarbonization” pathway toward net zero by 2050 at the latest.
Hosted by WWF, the OPCC celebrates measures taken by cities across the globe toward combating climate change and reducing their carbon footprint, in order to keep global warming within the 1.5°C limit.
Almost 600 cities from 53 countries have participated in the OPCC over the past ten years.
Last year, Batangas City was hailed as country winner for the Philippines. Santa Rosa was the country winner in 2016, while Pasig City took the top spot in 2018.
The OPCC is also an opportunity for WWF-Philippines to help local governments expand on their actions to combat climate change.
Over the next two years, WWF-Philippines will be working closely with participating cities to help them analyze their climate action plans and identify solutions to meet their mitigation and adaptation targets.
