Bacolod City is among the six cities in the Philippines that can avail of a grant from the World Bank for the closure of their existing dumpsite along with General Santos, Legaspi, Cabanatuan, Iloilo and Butuan City.

World Bank officers led by Nick Bowden, carbon finance specialist, are in Bacolod City to conduct exploratory work on the sanitary landfill for its potential to produce carbon credits that can be developed into energy.

Bacolod Mayor Evelio Leonardia, who met the officers yesterday said they have signed a memorandum of agreement with the Department of Environment and Natural Resources for the closure of the existing dumpsite and the World Bank will finance half of the total cost for its closure.

Bowden said the closure of the old dump site and the opening of the sanitary land fill will have a lot of environmental improvements in line with the Integrated  Persistent Organic Pollutants (IPOP) management project.

The IPOPs program works on climate change mitigation in the development of  carbon credits, he said.

Bowden said “The idea is that if you have green house gas, which is methane, escaping around the atmosphere, and if you can invest in a project activity that will help reduce green house gases, then you can get carbon credits like in the case of the landfill.”

 They are going around the Philippines looking for potential dumpsites and Bacolod is one potential site for this exploratory work, he said .They came to check on the potential of the city's landfill to develop carbon credits for the IPOP program, he added.

Bowden said they are also providing grants for selected cities and Bacolod is estimated to avail of about $300,000 for the closure of its old dump site.

Bowden said they are exploring programs with Landbank of the Philippines and are in the process of getting the landfill program registered with the UN right now.*CGS

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