Rhomir currently heads the Knowledge Management and Policy unit of the advocacy platform, Nature Sustainability and Local Development Center. He is a lawyer, a local development professional, and a climate change policy researcher with cross-cutting experiences in policy, research, and local development projects in both national and international organisations. He has spent the last ten years helping to facilitate local development initiatives and capacity building in communities, conducting research on environmental justice and climate change adaptation and advocating human rights and sustainable development.
He was a climate adaptation finance researcher who conducted a research project about the Philippines’ climate adaptation finance flagship program, the Peoples’ Survival Fund. The research project was jointly supervised by the Frankfurt School of Finance and Management and the Thailand Development Research Institute (TDRI). He was also chosen to participate in the 2019 SWITCH-ASIA Circular Economy Leadership program jointly administered by the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) and Tsinghua University (Beijing, China) and the 2019 Accountable Resource Governance in Asia-Pacific by the Natural Resource Governance Institute (NGRI) and the Gadja Mada University (Jogjakarta, Indonesia).
Alongside his advocacies on climate justice and community building, he tapped on the power of the pen to challenge normative assumptions and transform narratives on inequality as a citizen journalist for the Project LADDER in Brussels, Belgium. He also wrote for the Urbanizehub in Timisoara Romania contributing articles on community development, sustainability and urban development. He also helped organize a policy advocacy platform, the Human Rights Center Campaign Philippines which aims to advance the rights of poor and vulnerable groups such as women, indigenous people, and environmental defenders.
He attended the Joint European Master in Comparative Local Development Studies, which is a joint academic consortium of four universities in Europe, and an MSc in Water Management and Governance in the Netherlands.
What inspires me as a changemaker is a recognition that inequality may be a formidable opponent, but it is certainly not invincible. When I see people standing their ground against inequality and oppression, and when you see some ripple effects going on around you from that just single gesture—-that for me is a spontaneous wellspring of inspiration. Ultimately, change can indeed be most painful at the outset, an uphill struggle; most complicated in the middle, an enigma to resolve; but it also can be the most rewarding at the conclusion, warm comfort to cherish.Rhomir Yanquiling