BAGUIO COMPLETES PANSA-NOPEN WORK PLAN

April 19, 2025 Metro BLISTT

BAGUIO CITY

The city government has completed the work plans to implement its circular economy (CE) or “Pansa-nopen Tayo” programs to better
manage its wastes by reducing and turning them into resources and achieve sustainability. Dr. Marjorie Balay-as, Local Government Unit and Stakeholder Engagement Specialist, of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), said the city was the first local government unit to complete and submit the work plan among the LGU grantees in the country. She said this proved the dedication of the city officials led by Mayor Benjamin Magalong and the different public and private sectors to the CE program since its inception in October last year which the UNDP had praised.

The mayor submitted the work plan last March 18, 2025 to Secretary Juanito Victor Remulla of the Dept. of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) which is co-leading the Green LGUs project where the city is one of the 20 LGU recipients along with the UNDP and the Dept. of Trade and Industry. The mayor said the proposed work plans were laid out to implement the city’s chosen priority circular
economy portfolios during the project-wide Monitoring, Evaluation, Reporting and Learning (MERL) workshop held on October 9-10, 2024: the Bida Barangay for Circularity; CE 101: Teaching CE in Baguio Schools and Universities (Green Education); and the Breathe
Baguio Brand: Circular Tourism-Based Enterprises (Green Tourism).

“The CE portfolios were prioritized for initial implementation as these align with Baguio’s overall development agenda and are responsive to the current needs of the community to accelerate our ongoing initiatives in adopting the principles and practice of circular economy in
the city,” the mayor said. The work plans were crafted during a workshop on Nov. 7, 2024 where the key activities and milestones,
timelines, links to project log frame indicators, and indicative resource requirements with focus on plastics and organics for circularity. The plans were polished in a series of roundtable discussions held later.

In these undertakings, the city through the Local Circular Economy Action Team, the DILG Cordillera Field Office and the UNDP took the lead with the involvement of stakeholders from multi-sectoral groups composed of civil society organizations, academe, youth, micro small and medium enterprises (MSMEs). The mayor expressed hopes that the proposed activities and components in each CE portfolio will gain support from the European Union- Green Economy Programme in the Philippines (EU-GEPP) through the UNDP and DILG.

APR/Baguio-PIO