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Villafuerte stresses need to enforce PENCAS law amid continuous calamities
Villafuerte stresses need to enforce PENCAS law amid continuous calamities
At A Glance
- Camarines Sur 2nd district Rep. LRay Villafuerte is calling for the full implementation of Philippine Environment and Natural Capital Accounting System (PENCAS) law, a measure he co-authored, even as the country continues to suffer from flooding and other climate-induced calamities.
Camarines Sur 2nd district Rep. LRay Villafuerte is calling for the full implementation of Philippine Environment and Natural Capital Accounting System (PENCAS) law, a measure he co-authored, even as the country continues to suffer from flooding and other climate-induced calamities.
Villafuerte said the devastation caused by severe tropical storm "Kristine" and five other tropical cyclones that came after in Bicol signalled "the time for the no-nonsense implementation of state policies and programs mitigating the impact of climate change responsible for causing natural disasters of increasing frequency and intensity."
"It behooves our government and civil society to work closer together on the implementation of laws that are meant to ensure that economic growth and development remains not just high but sustainable as well," he said.
One pro-environment law that needs to be fully implemented is the newly enacted Republic Act (RA) No.11995, which tasks the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) to work with local government units (LGUs) and national government agencies and civil society ifor PENCAS.
Villafuerte said the law mandates the PSA, as the overseer of the PENCAS, to coordinate with, and provide technical support to, LGUs as well as with NGs and private groups in “generating and compiling environmental accounts, statistics and data for the purpose of NCA (natural capital accounting) and long-term economic planning.”
Under RA No.11995, the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) is directed to collate and consolidate all NCA-related data and statistics from all LGUs and submit them to the PSA for NCA purposes, he said.
"Moreover, the DILG shall ensure that LGUs utilize and mainstream the would-be NCA into their local policies, plans, and programs," he said.
"The PENCAS law puts in place an innovative system that will finally let the government fuse ecological conservation with sustainable economic planning in the long term," he added.
Villafuerte said, "RA 11995 seeks to establish the PENCAS as a way to reflect environmental inputs and outputs in the determination of national income accounts such as GNP (gross national product) and GDP (gross domestic product), as our conventional national income accounting systems tend to disregard the natural environment that generates goods and services, which are utilized but are not valuated in the process of producing goods and services."
He said that because "indicators and standards generated by the national income accounting system are considered vital information for economic management and policy-making, it is thus important that our national income accounts, by way now of the PENCAS, shall finally reflect a more accurate state of development and economy by incorporating both environmental and non-environmental economic inputs and outputs in state planning for sustainable growth and development."