Yeb Saño in Nature's ‘10 people who mattered in science this year’

Climate Change Commissioner Naderev “Yeb” Saño has been cited by international weekly science journal Nature as one of 10 people who mattered this year for having “focused the world’s attention — briefly — on global warming.”

 

Saño represented the Philippines at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change’s 19th Conference of Parties (COP) held in Warsaw, Poland in November while the country was reeling from Typhoon Yolanda.

 

“What my country is going through as a result of this extreme climate event is madness,” Saño said in his emotional speech that garnered a standing ovation from the crowd.

He also pledged to fast during the talks, “until a meaningful outcome is in sight”.

 

According to an earlier report, Saño lamented that after twenty years since the climate negotiations started, the world has yet to find a concerted solution that will stop mankind’s harmful interference with the global climate.

Previous climate change talks have ended in diluted compromises and commitments that have yet to be fulfilled. 

The conference ended with member nations agreeing to set up a mechanism to help poor and developing countries deal with the effects of climate change.

 

Nature said that Saño is not sure what impact his speech had. He is also aware that scientists “shy away” from attributing a single weather event to global warming, but he argues that Typhoon Yolanda helped bring the climate issue into the international spotlight.

 

Nature listed Saño along with biologist Feng Zhang who created a powerful tool that can customize DNA, virologist Deborah Persaud who provided the “strongest evidence yet” that infants with HIV can be cured, and another virologist Hualan Chen who helped quell an outbreak of H7N9 avian flu in China. — Kim Luces/JDS, GMA News