Pinoys Spearhead UN Climate Change Summit

Especially nowadays, Filipinos are gaining a reputation for being international media prodigies. After bagging the CNN Hero of the Year accolade, two young Filipino minds have followed Efren Penaflorida in winning in yet another online contest. The tandem of Paul Garilao and Alfonso Orioste Jr. has won CNN’s online contest “Raise Your Voice: Change Climate Change,” which was co-organized by the United Nations in order to bring forth to the world climate change awareness. The online contest aims to show the world how climate change is slowly getting the best of the planet. It encourages individuals to make documentaries to make known their views and opinions about the global phenomenon that is climate change.

Garilao and Orioste’s entry has received quite an impressive number of views since it was released in the Internet. That response is proof that these two Filipinos’ video bears the promise of opening the eyes and minds of people towards climate change and its impact. The two La Sallians’ entry bested over 500 videos in the contest, gaining for Garilao and Orioste an invitation to participate in the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen taking place from December 7 to 18, 2009. The conference is considered to be the largest coming-together to tackle the issue of climate change since the Kyoto Protocol. Garilao and Orioste as the Philippines’ delegates will be participate in the UN Climate Change Consortium debates which will be under the theme “Reduce global warming emissions and ultimately chart a course that avoids the most severe impacts of climate change.”

While in Hawaii, Garilao was moved when he saw the images on his tv screen and online of devastated homes and lives after Typhoons Ondoy (international codename: Ketsana) and Pepeng (Parma) ravaged the parts of the country. This prompted him to contact and ask Orioste, a close friend in Manila, to capture images and shoot videos of the aftermath, as well as of how Filipinos have weathered the storm through the spirit of the “Bayanihan,” a common Filipino tradition of communal unity.

Garilao emphasizes that their entry’s purpose is to encourage and uplift the spirit of the Filipinos, and to urge local leaders and government officials to know more about the climate change issue so they can create effective policies on disaster mitigation in times of calamity. Garilao has always been an advocate for the environment since his college days. His college research on LPG two-stroke engine focused on alternative energies. He and Orioste are advocating the use of alternative sources of energy in order to replace the use of fossil fuels, which generate greenhouse gases that contribute to the deterioration of the ozone layer.

Garilao hopes to be back in the Philippines to share what they learn during the summit and to instigate discussions with local leaders on environmental issues. “As we have experienced, the storm Ondoy taught us a lot of lessons. This is a wakeup call for the Philippine government to implement laws and programs on environmental management and disaster preparedness. We want to echo this concern to the Philippine government and the global leaders of UN Climate Change Conference,” Orioste shares. “We may not be the experts in this field, but it is our passion to keep the conversations on climate change issues rolling both in the communities and the cyberspace. If we are given the chance to go to Copenhagen, we will return our key learning points to communities in the Philippines,” Garilao adds. Both hope to move everyone to translate ideals into actions against climate change.