Vice President Jejomar C. Binay said the Housing and Land Use Regulatory Board (HLURB) is working with German experts to integrate climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction planning instruments into Comprehensive Land Use Plans (CLUP) of local government units (LGUs). “The HLURB recently signed Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) with German firm Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Internationale Zeusammenarbeit (GIZ) to assist the agency in its efforts to improve environmental and land governance in the country,” Binay said. “The MOA involves integrating climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction planning instruments into CLUPs in the form of climate proofing and disaster risk mapping,” he added. Binay also said the MOA calls for GIZ to provide assistance to HLURB in its endeavor to enhance the CLUP guidebooks by including Forest Land Use and Coastal Land Use Planning as well as the existing Model Zone Ordinance and the Plan Review Parameters and Guidelines. For its part, the HLURB committed to provide technical assistance to LGUs in implementing existing policies and guidelines to ensure that the CLUP is in line with other prescribed local plans such as Comprehensive Development Plan (CDP), Forest Land Use Plan (FLUP), Coastal Fisheries Resources Management Plan (CFRMP) and Local Climate Change Action Plan. The HLURB also plans to integrate the experiences of GIZ in climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction planning into existing and future reference manuals, tools and guidelines developed or updated by HLURB itself or in cooperation with other development partners or government agencies. “The partnership with GIZ was a direct response by the HLURB Board to the policies stated under the Climate Change Act of 2009,” said the housing czar. “This law seeks to systematically integrate the concept of climate change in various phases of policy formulation, development plans, poverty reduction strategies and other development tools and techniques by all agencies of the government,” he added/ The HLURB, together with LGUs, is also urging local leaders to address environmental problems as a concern interlinked with land use planning. In 2011, the HLURB began to require all LGUs to integrate climate change adaptation and disaster risk mitigation in their CLUPs before seeking HLURB Board approval. The HLURB, which Binay chairs, is the national government agency primarily tasked with assisting local government units in drawing up their CLUPs and regulating the real estate industry. Its plans and programs are anchored on three major mandates namely planning, regulation and adjudication.