DBM speeds up release of climate-change funds

The Department of Budget and Management (DBM) is speeding up the release of funds for climate change by allowing the online submission of the budget.

The Unified Accounts Code of Structure (UACS) that will expedite reportorial of expenditures was also introduced in government offices with an information campaign launched last week.

The (DBM) reported some P21.7 billion in allocation from the 2015 National budget to rebuild communities visited by disasters and to respond to calamities.

The National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Fund (NDRMMF) got allocation of P14 billion from the calamities fund.

The government also strengthened the Risk Resiliency Program with the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) receiving P47.3 billion for river basins and areas below sea level.

With the enormous budget allocated for future disasters, the government is introducing new methods to tag climate change related expenditures.

Budget Secretary Florencio Abad recently released Joint Memorandum Circular (JMC) 2015-01 to finally incorporate the Risk Resiliency Program (RRP) to constitute a major part of the climate change expenditure program.

The memorandum said, “all climate change related strategies and investments of the government shall be identified as adaptation and mitigation as defined in Sections 3.2 and 3.5 of this JMC.”

Section 3.2 states “an activity should be classified as adaptation- related if it intends to reduce the vulnerability of human or natural systems to the impacts of climate change and climate-related risks, by maintaining or increasing adaptive capacity and resilience.

Section 3.5 on climate change mitigation states “an activity should be classified as climate change mitigation if it aims at reducing greenhouse gas emissions (GHG), directly or indirectly, by avoiding or capturing GHG before they are emitted to the atmosphere or sequestering those already in the atmosphere by enhancing
“sinks” such as forests.”

The memorandum also directs all government agencies to be guided by the Quality Review and Assurance (QAR) Guidelines (annex A) developed by the Climate Change Commission.
The QAR guidelines will be accomplished by the agencies and will be the basis for tagging, analysis of proposed programs.

The memorandum also states that the national government agencies, States Universities and Colleges (SUCs) and GOCCs shall review or examine the technical documents if it qualifies as an adaptation or mitigation response based on the guided questions included in annex A.

The JMC also defined that for programs that qualify as adaptation or mitigation, the entire program budget shall be tagged as Climate Change expenditures.

The budget department announced previously that it would be working on a P21.7-billion budget program for the “Build Back Better” included in the General Appropriation Act in 2015.

Riza Lozada