Legarda presses government to restore full PhilHealth budget, seeks clarity on missing funds

November 19, 2025

Senator Loren Legarda called for full transparency on PhilHealth’s funding during deliberations on the 2026 national budget, stressing that mandated subsidies must be properly allocated and released.

In her interpellation on the General Principles of the 2026 General Appropriations Bill, Legarda raised concerns over gaps in PhilHealth’s budget for 2024, 2025, and 2026. She asked where the funds were originally placed, why they were removed, and how the government plans to fully restore them.

Legarda noted that PhilHealth received zero national government […]

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Legarda co-sponsors Classroom-Building Acceleration Program bill

November 19, 2025

Senator Loren Legarda co-sponsored Senate Bill No. 1482, or the Classroom-Building Acceleration Program (CAP) bill, citing the urgent need to build structurally sound, climate-resilient classrooms as the country faces both a persistent backlog and intensifying environmental threats.

“In the past days, communities across several regions braced for the impact of Typhoons Tino and Uwan,” Legarda said.

“These remind us that our schools must not only keep pace with population growth but also withstand the intensifying threats of climate change,” Legarda added.

In its […]

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Legarda pushes nature-based flood solutions at 5th INREM Conference

November 18, 2025

Senator Loren Legarda called for a nationwide shift toward nature-based flood control and ecosystem governance during her keynote address at the 5th International Conference on Integrated Natural Resources and Environment Management (INREM), held from 18 to 20 November 2025 at the Acacia Hotel, Alabang, Muntinlupa City.

Speaking before scientists, policymakers, and resilience advocates, Legarda warned that “climate change is the governance challenge of our generation,” citing the Philippines’ record of 43 million disaster displacements from 2014 to 2023.

“The Philippines faces about […]

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Keynote Speech of Senator Loren Legarda | Beyond Concrete: Institutionalizing Nature-Based Solutions for Resilience and Sustainability | 5th International Conference on INREM | 18 November 2025

November 18, 2025

Distinguished guests, policymakers, scientists, and partners in resilience—good morning.

Let me begin with the global context—familiar to us, but impossible to ignore. Global temperatures have already risen by about 1.412°C above the pre-industrial baseline, and the long-term global average is projected to exceed 1.5°C in the early 2030s unless emissions fall rapidly. What happens globally is felt here with even greater force. The Philippines faces about 20 cyclones each year, with 8 to 9 making landfall, and as the world’s most […]

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From heritage to policy: Legarda moves to institutionalize Schools of Living Traditions

November 17, 2025

Senator Loren Legarda, Chairperson of the Senate Committee on Culture and the Arts, formally sponsored on November 12 a landmark measure institutionalizing the Schools of Living Traditions (SLT), a decisive step toward safeguarding Indigenous knowledge systems and community-based cultural practices.

The bill seeks to amend Republic Act No. 10066, or the National Cultural Heritage Act of 2009, by establishing the Schools of Living Traditions as a national program] under the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) to preserve and […]

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