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Community Bulletin Board

Portraits of climate change unveiled at the Senate


For eight months, photographer Jose Enrique Soriano visited key areas in Surigao and Southern Leyte to interact with communities whose livelihood and ways of life are under threat due to severe flooding, drought and changing rainfall patterns. The photo exhibit "Visage: Portraits of Filipinos Facing Climate Change" is Soriano's first in four years. The elusive photographer was sought out by climate policy think tank Institute of Climate and Sustainable Cities (iCSC) to capture images of people directly affected by climate change. Meanwhile, Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile renewed his call to pass the People's Survival Fund (PSF), a milestone measure which will dedicate climate change adaptation financing to local governments and communities. Enrile made the call after touring the Visage photo exhibit, saying that Soriano's photos "are haunting reminders of our urgent obligation to extend support to communities living on the frontline of the climate crisis." Senator Loren Legarda, chair of the Senate Climate Change Committee and author of the Climate Change Act of 2009, echoed Enrile and said the PSF bill is "One significant step our country can take towards climate change resiliency is passing the People’s Survival Fund Bill," said Legarda. "The PSF intends to create a special trust fund that would finance adaptation projects and programs for the most vulnerable among us—such as those whose portraits are found here," Legarda explained. The PSF bill intends to fund the adaptation programs of local governments situated in particularly vulnerable areas. Activites that can be supported include supporting innovations in irrigation in regions where drought or intense rainfall conditions are expected to become the annual norm. Others include support ecosystem based risk management. "Responding to climate change impacts is an additional burden on our already strained development budget," said Mayor Rico Rentuza of St. Bernard, the town where extreme, climate change-linked rainfall created a landslide that claimed over a thousand residents in 2006. "We call on the Senate to pass the PSF now. We do not want mere relief. What we want is to take early adaptation action." Flooding and landslides in January 2011 created Php5.3 million in direct damage to agriculture and around Php11.7 million damage to infrastructure. The total damage, around Php17 million, was a big blow to St. Bernard, whose internal revenue allotment is only around Php43 million, with an internal income of Php9 million. St. Bernard residents figure prominently in Soriano's photos. "Climate change is happening," said Red Constantino of the Institute for Climate and Sustainable Cities, which co-organized the exhibit with Enrile and Legarda. "It is not just about episodic disasters brought about by extreme typhoons or slow onset calamities due to rising sea levels and warming temperatures. It is about people. Vulnerable Filipino communities should not have to confront climate change on their own. It is time pass the People's Survival Fund bill," Constantino said. The Visage images were taken with Hasselblad cameras using Fujifilm NPH400 colour film. These Chromogenic prints were scanned and custom-printed at the YKL Colorlab. Soriano is mostly known for his portraiture and documentary work. His last exhibit, Tabaco, was mounted in 2007 in SilverLens Gallery. It was the result of nearly five years of travelling in the interior of the Ilocos region to document the dying craft of hand-rolled tobacco and the women involved in it. Before that, he exhibited Episodes, which documented the lives of the mentally-ill in the National Center for Mental Health, a body of work that took him nearly a decade to complete. In between, he mounted Five Photographers, the result of a curatorial grant from SilverLens to put together works of five of the most influential photojournalists in the ’50s and ‘60s—Mario Co, Joe Gabor, Silverio Enriquez, Ed Santiago, and Romy Vitug. Soriano’s photographs have appeared in Life magazine, Newsweek, Vanity Fair, Ms., Self, Observer (London), Daily Express (London), Sunday Times (London), Elle (Singapore), Cleo (Singapore), 8 Days (Singapore), Her World (Singapore), and various newspapers and magazines in the Philippines before leaving for Singapore in 1994, where he worked with the Singapore Straits Times for 10 years. His next tour was in 2008 in the UAE, where he was photo editor of Khaleej Times. He returned to Manila in 2010. For inquiries about the Visage photos, please write to red@ejeepney.org

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