DAVAO CITY (PNA) – Climate change is everyone’s concern and not just of the national and local government, Region 11 office of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR 11) Regional Executive Director Jim O. Sampulna said.

Addressing the recently held information exhibit of government programs and projects, Sampulna called on all people in various strata of the society to do their share of arresting the “debilitating” effects of climate change.

He said the simple act of segregating wastes means a lot to efforts geared towards curbing the destruction to ozone layer which scientists have found out to have waned thereby causing heat to penetrate the earth’s surface.

Climate change has been experienced periodically since millions of years ago but its latest occurrence is popularly known as “global warming” which is “the increase in the average temperature of the Earth’s near-surface air and oceans since the mid-20th century and its projected continuation.”

Wikipedia says that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concludes that most of the observed temperature increases since the middle of the 20th century was caused by increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases resulting from human activity such as fossil fuel burning and deforestation.

As this developed, Sampulna also encouraged the public to grow trees and help the government’s management of community forest which is a program that DENR is spearheading.

Explaining that DENR has been tasked as one of the government agencies to get at the frontline of climate change mitigating measures, he said DENR’s programs and projects have been done in line with addressing climate change.

“We have been here to address climate change,” he said.