Phl eyed as global hub for climate technology

A collaborative effort among the government, the private sector and the academe is in full swing to turn the Philippines into a global hub for climate technologyand innovation.

- RAINIER ALLAN RONDA

The Department of Science and Technology (DOST) is partnering with Filipino software developers group DEVCON Philippines and the De La Salle University (DLSU) for an ambitious effort, codenamed CResT, for the Climate Resilience Technology platform.

The platform harnesses the technological expertise of DEVCON, the scientific leadership of DOST and DLSU’s advanced research infrastructure to create cutting-edge climate resilience technologies.

DEVCON founder Winston Damarillo said the program would seek to develop a tech startup ecosystem focused on developing tech and apps for climate resilience adoptable by corporates and local government units to deal with the effects of climate change.

“The whole goal of this is to transform all the spending we do on climate resilience, all the R&D that we’re making and make it a real product that we can use to solve our problems here in the Philippines, and a product that we can export,” Damarillo said.

“We just made number one (in the list) of the most at risk country in the world for climate change,” he noted, referring to the World Bank’s 2023 World Risk Index where the Philippines led the list of the country most prone to disasters among 183 countries around the globe.