Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, September 26) — The Asian Development Bank (ADB) on Tuesday called on governments to prepare social safety nets to cushion the impact of climate change such as El Niño.
Santiago Levy, a non-resident senior fellow at The Brookings Institution’s Global Economy and Development Program, said the structure and mechanism of social protection or cash transfers needed for climate change mitigation would be different from the conventional conditional and unconditional cash transfers.
Social Welfare Secretary Rex Gatchalian said his agency is studying a pilot test on cash cards for those affected by storms and other climate-related disasters.One of the things that the ADB, World Food Programme and we have been pushing for are anticipatory action cards,” said Gatchalian, “meaning give them cash cards and load them up pag may padating na bagyo [when there are coming storms].He added this would give families the option to choose what they need in preparation for natural disasters instead of waiting for the storm to arrive before giving out much-needed aid.Gatchalian said this is in the agency’s plan.
“Pinag-aaralan ng departamento,” he pointed out. “Sa katunayan yung mga ibang partner natin may pilot on the ground.”
“Syempre kailangan pag-aralan nang mabuti kasi magastos ito,” he added. “Ibig sabihin, you load up their cash cards ahead of time. So the jury is still out.”
[Translation: The department is looking into it. In fact, some of our partners have a pilot program on the ground. Of course, this has to be studied well because it can be costly, meaning you load up their cash cards ahead of time. So, the jury is still out.]
