Oscar M. LopezExcerpts from Lopez Group chairman emeritus Oscar M. Lopez’s keynote remarks to the Building Critical Mass Awareness of Climate Change—Engaging Media, Advertising and Entertainment Sectors seminar on August 22, 2013

There are many things that can cause and influence changes in climate, but for our purposes today, suffice it for us to understand the term “climate change” in a rather basic, straightforward way, namely, “changes in the earth’s weather, including changes in temperature, wind patterns and rainfall, especially the increase in the temperature of the earth’s atmosphere that is caused by the increase of particular gases, especially carbon dioxide.”

The weather-related natural disasters we’ve suffered during the past several years told us that it was not enough to merely exercise environmental responsibility. Every year, we’ve had to spend large amounts of money repairing damage to our assets by flooding, landslides, soil erosion and high winds. Every year, we’ve had to spend large sums in contributing to disaster rescue and relief operations for victims of natural disasters in and close to our areas of operation.

To avoid having to incur these costs repeatedly, we have endeavored to relocate our people and our assets to safer ground. But how about the majority of the people, the other affected communities? Unlike equipment and facilities, communities cannot be easily transplanted. They are tied to locations from which they grow, catch, produce or otherwise earn their sustenance. If they are in harm’s way, where will they relocate and who will take care of their needs?

We began to focus on just one aspect of the problem: how do we generate better and earlier forecasts of weather and geologic events so that we could, in our businesses, act to mitigate the resultant risks, and outside our businesses, so that we could warn communities earlier to move themselves out of harm’s way?

In the process of looking at the problem, we discovered two things: first, considering that we are one of the countries most affected by climate change and geohazards, being in the so-called Ring of Fire and right smack in the intertropical convergence zone, very little research was being done and published on how to mitigate the risks to our people and property. Second, even where we had expertise and resources addressing the issues, there was not much collaboration and dialogue going on between them.

There was already another initiative, Project Noah, addressing the issue of providing earlier and more accurate forecasts of excessive wind and rain, to supplement the work done by Pagasa. We thought that we could best contribute by providing a meeting place, whether physical or virtual, where research could be encouraged and where the fruits of research could be shared, discussed and translated into effective interventions.

And so, begging your indulgence for oversimplifying what actually happened and pressing the fastforward button, thus was born the OML Center. It is named after me, to honor my steward - ship of the Lopez businesses before I retired into the role of chairman emeritus. It is a partnership between the First Holdings Group of companies and three of the country’s leading learning and research institutions: the University of the Philippines, Ateneo de Manila University and De La Salle University. …In my view, the center has accomplished so much in such a short time and has exceeded all our expectations thus far, so much so that we are very excited about the contributions that it will make to our manner of coping with climate change in the future.

In ending, I would like to recall a plea that went out to the world almost fifty years ago, to help save animals inhabiting a section of rainforest in Central America that was about to be inundated by a hydroelectric dam project nearing completion. The simple call went out to the world: “Time is short, and the water rises.”

That plea resonates just as loudly today, but this time, it is a plea that goes out to our people, to get themselves out of harm’s way.