IN HIS LETTER (?RP?S VULNERAbility to climate change,? Inquirer, 11/17/2009), Edmundo Enderez supports Secretary Heherson Alvarez and Sen. Loren Legarda in ?asking for assistance and support from rich and neighboring countries ... to enable the country to effectively adapt to climate change.?

He is right in saying that the Philippines is more vulnerable to climate change than South Korea, Japan, China, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam because of their faster economic growth rate and lower population and poverty incidence. But our ability to adapt to climate change should be made dependent not on foreign money but on our own initiative to achieve economic transformation and reduce poverty?in precisely the same way those nations have done through their resourcefulness rather than by begging for assistance.

Climate change and poverty are ?the two defining challenges of this century.? Both require political will and technological know-how, which we never had. These suggest there is hardly anything the Philippines can do to mitigate climate change. Our survival chance is to focus on adaptive measures by reducing poverty through science and technology (S&T) and education.

We should not just wait for a new technology from another country. We have to develop the ability to adapt and implement it. And we can only do these with changed research practice and improved S&T performance (search Google or Yahoo, ?Doing research for development?). Developed countries have been told: ?You don?t just go and helicopter-drop a new technology into a country. You need that country to have developed the ability to identify the technology (it needs), to adopt it, and to implement it.? This explains why the Philippines has not been able to move forward despite decades of implementing foreign technologies.

Enderez said our many environmental projects, our good environment practices and our being ?the most environment-friendly? country can justify the mission of Alvarez and Legarda to ask for assistance from our neighbors. He forgot that we spent billions of pesos for reforestation, but lost 30 percent of our forest cover from 1950 to the present.

In his book titled ?Collapse,? Jared Diamond describes how widespread deforestation happens in some countries. In an interview, he said, the Philippines is one of those headed for collapse. I would not be surprised if the Philippines? share of atmospheric carbon from burning fossil fuel was exceeded by deforestation. Our best bet to survive climate change is to continue using available energy and to focus, at our own initiative, on reducing poverty.

It is ironic for poor countries contributing the least to climate change to suffer the most from its impact. But let us do our part and replant our forests because they will absorb the carbon dioxide we will produce in the course of our economic development.

?FLOR LACANILAO, retired professor of marine science, University of the Philippines Diliman, florlaca@gmail.com