Keynote Address Senator Loren Legarda Trans-Pacific Sustainability Dialogue 2025: Sustainable Cities and Communities

Your Excellency, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon; distinguished colleagues from the Ban Ki-moon Foundation, Stanford APARC, the UP Asian Center, our partner institutions, and dear friends—good day.

It is my honor to host this luncheon and to welcome you all to Manila for this Trans-Pacific Sustainability Dialogue. When Secretary-General Ban visited the Senate last year, I had the joy of welcoming him and Madame Yoo to my home. Over laing, bagnet, tinolang manok, and halo-halo, we were reminded that the best policy conversations happen over shared meals.

Today, we gather in that same spirit of candor, respect, and shared purpose. Secretary-General Ban, your leadership, from championing the Sustainable Development Goals to guiding the Paris Agreement, has shown us all that even complex global challenges can be met through empathy and collective resolve. The Philippine Senate’s Resolution No. 929, which I had the honor to sponsor last year, was our modest tribute to you – a leader who has built bridges of cooperation across continents. The urgency of this dialogue is not abstract—it is lived reality for our people. In recent days, Typhoons Tino and Uwan have tested the strength of our cities once more.

Typhoon Tino claimed 204 lives and affected 3.7 million people, while on-going reports states that Typhoon Uwan has left two dead and displaced over 800,000. Hard-hit Cebu alone recorded 141 fatalities. These tragedies come barely two months after a 6.9- magnitude earthquake struck the same province, claiming 79 lives.

Nature has been speaking to us clearly:
our urban growth has outpaced our
safeguards. Beyond the natural calamities, unchecked mining and reclamation, deforestation, unregulated construction, uncontrolled urban sprawl into no-build zones, poor waste management, and corruption in infrastructure and government clearances have eroded the very foundations of safety and sustainability.

It is a hard truth—our cities and
municipalities are not yet built for the climate realities and natural calamities we now face. The most painful part is seeing people watch as their lives, hard-earned homes, and livelihoods are swept away by floods or reduced to rubble—losses that no number of government relief can truly replace.

Despite this, we press on. Guided by the belief that sound laws and collective action can still shape a safer and more caring future for our cities.

In this Congress, we are advancing
measures that realize the vision of SDG 11 or the Sustainable Cities and Communities Goal and its linkages to our broader climate and development goals.

At the foundation of these efforts is the Philippine Ecosystem and Natural Capital Accounting System (PENCAS) Act, enacted in the 19th Congress, which embeds ecosystem values into national and local planning and budgeting; linking economic progress with ecological balance.

Building on this foundation, we are now pursuing legislation that strengthens urban resilience and livability:

• The Sustainable Cities and Communities
  Bill aligns housing, transport, land use, infrastructure, and environmental policies across all levels of government.
• The Clean Gateway Cities Bill
  institutionalizes a Cleanliness Audit and Scorecard System to ensure well- maintained and accessible public spaces.
• The Urban Walkability and Safe
  Pathways Standards Bill mandates pedestrian and bike infrastructure in new roads and bridges, promoting human- centered mobility.
• The Government SHIFT Bill requires at least 10 percent of government vehicles to be electric or hybrid by 2030.
• The Noise Pollution Control and
  Abatement Bill addresses urban noise as a public health and livability issue. Complementing these are measures that extend the same principle of resilience from cities to coasts:
• The Blue Economy Bill will safeguard our oceans, sustain livelihoods, and integrate
  coastal resilience into development.
• The Low Carbon Economy Bill puts a price on carbon, driving industries toward decarbonization and financing a
  just transition.
• The Philippine Circular Economy
  Promotion Bill keeps materials in use, cuts waste, and creates green jobs.
• The Plastic Tax Bill curbs single-use plastics, generating funds for waste management and ecosystem restoration.

AND the National Coastal Greenbelt Bill restores mangroves and beach forests as living shields against storm surges and erosion.

Together, these measures form a
legislative blueprint for sustainable,
resilient, and inclusive development—from our cities to our seas.

This is the work of building a future that endures. It is not easy, and it cannot be done by government alone. It demands the same values that you, Secretary-General Ban, have long embodied—cooperation, compassion, and courage in the face of complexity. Let this Dialogue be one such bridge: linking research and policy, the past we inherited, and the future we must build
together.

Thank you, Secretary-General Ban, for reminding us that sustainability is not a destination but a daily practice.

May our discussions today be as
nourishing as this meal.

Thank you, and good afternoon.