The country’s laws on climate change adaptation (CCA) and disaster risk reduction (DRR) are the “best in the world,” UN special envoy Margareta Wahlström said Thursday.

Wahlström, special DRR representative of UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, praised the Philippines for taking the lead in the global campaign to mitigate disaster risks brought about by global warming.

She commended Senator Loren Legarda, the UN Champion for DRR and CCA for Asia and the Pacific, for ensuring the passage of climate-responsive laws and for mainstreaming the CCA and DRR mechanisms into the national political agenda.

“You do have now an excellent legal framework for disaster risk reduction and an excellent legal framework for climate adaptation. The basis [of the laws] is really for empowering local governments,” Wahlström said in a press conference.

Legarda thanked Wahlström for the compliment, but told the media that the “challenge is to translate them into local community action to save lives, and reduce disaster risks and economic losses.”

An environmental crusader for two decades now, Legarda authored the Climate Change Act of 2009 (Republic Act No. 9729), which created the Climate Change Commission and cosponsored the Philippine Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Act of 2010 (RA 10121).

Wahlström stressed that both laws highlighted the policy shift from a reactionary to a proactive stance in addressing disasters.

“We have in the Philippines the best two laws—not only in Asia-Pacific, but in Margareta’s words—in the world,” said Legarda.

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