DAVAO CITY — The Cacao Industry Development Association of Mindanao (CIDAMI) has asked Senator Cynthia A. Villar, who chairs the Senate committee on agriculture and food, to sponsor a resolution to declare Davao City the chocolate capital of the Philippines.

Ms. Villar, who toured the farm of cacao producer and chocolate-maker Malagos over the weekend, committed to pursue the resolution in 2018.

“In January we will file a resolution to make Davao City the chocolate capital of the Philippines because most of the biggest producers of chocolates and farms are in Davao City,” Ms. Villar told the media during the farm tour.

Ms. Villar said the declaration is expected to encourage more farmers to venture into cacao production and help develop the industry.

She said she will back the establishment of farm schools “to teach farmers how to plant cacao in the proper way so that we will produce good quality cacao and chocolates.”

The senator’s visit to Malagos followed the Kakao Konek 2017 conference in Davao City on Dec. 5 and 6, which launched the “Chocolate Tour Overload” farm tourism program.

“Farm tourism in the country has thrived on the best practices and growth of the cocoa industry,” said Ms. Villar, author of Republic Act 10816, or the Farm Tourism Development Act, that mandates the promotion of tourism at agricultural destinations through partnership with private stakeholders.

The tour of Malagos, also known as Puentespina Farm after the family that owns and manages it, includes stops at the cacao plantation, fermentation and sorting areas, dryer, and the interactive chocolate museum.

Puentespina Farm beans have been recognized as some of the Best 50 in the World at the 2017 Edition of the Cocoa Excellence Programme in France. Malagos Chocolates have also been bringing home various international recognitions over the last couple of years.

Davao City, for its part, recently opened Cacao City in the downtown area, a cafe/showroom for the industry.

“Accounting for 90% of the local cacao production, the spotlight is now on Mindanao, with Davao as the country’s chocolate capital, even as the farmers face the challenge to meet the growing demand for Philippine cacao, indicating international recognition of its quality,” Davao Mayor Sara Duterte-Carpio said during the Kakao Konek 2017.

“I am full of optimism that our micro and macro farmers and entrepreneurs will gain more insights in optimizing their productivity and in giving them an upper hand in the market,” Ms. Carpio added. — Maya M. Padillo

FIERCE HURRICANES, heat waves, floods and wildfires ravaged the planet in 2017, as scientists said the role of climate change in causing or worsening certain natural disasters has grown increasingly clear.

It was also the year the world’s second largest polluter, the United States, turned its back on the 196-nation Paris climate deal meant to limit global warming to under two degrees Celsius (1.5 degrees Fahrenheit) over pre-industrial levels.

President Donald Trump, who has dismissed global warming as a Chinese hoax, vowed to quit the 2015 Paris accord and tapped fossil fuel allies to key environmental posts.

His administration also dropped climate change from the list of national security threats, announced plans to auction off vast swaths of the Gulf of Mexico to oil and gas drilling, and signed a proposal to eliminate the Clean Power Plan, aimed at limiting the release of polluting greenhouse gases.

Trump says the goal is to make America a dominant source of energy for the world, and to create jobs.

“Together, we are going to start a new energy revolution — one that celebrates American production on American soil,” Trump said in June.

In October, Trump signed a proclamation to make America a net energy exporter by 2026, reviving the coal industry and seeking to access the estimated $50 trillion in untapped shale, oil, and natural gas reserves, particularly on federal lands.

While the fossil fuel industry has applauded the moves, scientists have expressed alarm.

“The Trump administration, in less than a year, has done more to undermine climate policy than even the worst previous administration on climate (i.e. George W. Bush) had done over the course of two full terms,” said Michael Mann, a climatologist and geophysicist at Pennsylvania State University, in an e-mail to AFP.

Mann blamed the conservative billionaire Koch brothers and fossil fuel lobbyists for essentially running US environmental policy under the Trump administration.

“They must be stopped,” he added, because their actions “pose an existential threat to us and our children and grandchildren.”

The more fossil fuels we burn, the hotter the planet becomes due to the accumulation of heat-trapping greenhouse gases.

The world is currently on track for its third warmest year in modern times.

Experts say global warming can make certain events, like floods, drought and hurricanes, more frequent and sometimes worse.

Among the fiercest storms seen this year were severe monsoon rains in Bangladesh, India and Nepal that killed more than 1,200 people and affected 40 million people, destroying homes, livestock and crops, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Spain and Portugal have grappled with a deadly drought that dried up rivers, killed crops and fueled wildfires.

Meanwhile, an unusually active hurricane season roiled the Atlantic, Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean with 17 big storms, the most since 2005.

Major, deadly hurricanes included Harvey, which flooded Texas with 50 inches (125 centimeters) of rain in some places. The massively powerful Irma devastated the Caribbean and Florida, while Maria flattened much of Puerto Rico.

California Governor Jerry Brown, whose state is currently battling its third largest wildfire since 1932, spoke this month of how such devastation could be the “new normal.”

“This could be something that happens every year or every few years,” Brown told reporters.

That phrase was echoed in the 2017 Arctic Report Card, an international peer-reviewed report on the fragile Arctic, which is warming at twice the pace of the rest of the world.

“The Arctic environmental system has reached a ‘new normal,’” that will raise sea levels, alter weather patterns and unleash more extreme weather across the globe, it said.

Just as extreme are the differing actions around the world to address climate change.

China, the world’s biggest polluter, just unveiled plans for a national carbon market likely to become the world’s largest exchange for emissions credits — earning praise from environmentalists.

At a Paris summit this month, banks and companies pledged to move billions of dollars out of coal, oil and natural gas.

The United States, however, is “doubling down on fossil fuels to power the nation and the world,” said Julia Olson of the Children’s Trust, which along with dozens of US children is suing the US government for failing to protect the nation’s air, land and water.

Peter Gleick, a president-emeritus of the Pacific Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, said Trump’s actions will reverberate for decades.

“Just as human-caused climate change is accelerating and having an increasingly clear impact on disasters and extreme weather events, the US administration is turning its back on climate science and policies that are needed to protect the American people, property, and the environment,” he told AFP.

“The anti-science agenda of the Trump administration will, without doubt, lead to preventable deaths and disasters, and is inexcusable.” — AFP