Philippines urges countries to fulfill climate change commitments

The Philippines is calling on the global community to end the debate on climate change and for nations to start implementing concrete actions to save the planet from an environmental catastrophe, Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III said Wednesday.

In his remarks at the 26th United Nations (UN) Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26), which is being held in Glasgow, Scotland, Dominguez said, “The time for debate is over. This is the time to finally begin acting on the fulfillment of our commitments and obligations to humanity.”

The Cabinet official said the commitments that nations have to flesh out include building a framework for climate justice to ensure that countries that have "polluted and continue to pollute the Earth's environment through unthinking industrialization starting 200 years ago [must] pay for the grants, investments, and subsidies needed for the most vulnerable countries to adapt to climate change."
 
Developed countries have fallen short of their commitment formalized at the 16th COP meeting to mobilize $100 billion per year by 2020 to assist developing countries in fighting climate change, he said.
 
“We have very high expectations for this COP26 meeting to become not just merely an annual platform for discussion but a catalyst for concrete action plans. It’s time that we do some actual work on the ground and build a framework for climate justice,” said Dominguez, chairman-designate of the country’s Climate Change Commission (CCC) and head of the Philippine delegation to the two-week COP26.
  
Dominguez said the Philippines has begun implementing concrete actions to demonstrate to the world how a developing and climate-vulnerable country can lead the fight to save the planet.

“The Philippines is determined to be a world leader in this fight against climate change,” he said.
 
“We are moving ahead with urgency to fulfill our ambitious target. We shifted from theorizing about climate change to executing practical climate adaptation and mitigation projects on the ground. We have put together a group of Filipino experts who represent all corners of the Philippines to engage our fishermen and farmers to prepare them to execute localized action plans,” he added.
 
As its Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) to the Paris Agreement, the Philippines has set a bold and ambitious commitment of projected greenhouse gas emission reduction and avoidance of 75% from 2020 to 2030 for the agriculture, waste, industry, transport, and energy sectors.
 
The Finance chief said that among the concrete actions that the Philippines has initiated to fight climate change are its first-ever Sustainable Finance Roadmap to deploy the engines of finance to get green projects moving across the country, and pushing a law banning single-use plastics so that Filipinos can do their part every day in saving the world’s environment.
 
Another initiative, he said, is the Philippines’ partnership with the Asian Development Bank (ADB) on a landmark Energy Transition Mechanism (ETM) project that will accelerate the retirement of coal-fired plants in the country and the transition to clean energy, which came after President Rodrigo Duterte declared a moratorium on new coal plants.
 
To move ahead with urgency in fulfilling its ambitious NDC target and implementing practical climate adaptation and mitigation projects on the ground, Dominguez said the Philippines’ CCC had put together a group of Filipino experts who represent all corners of the archipelago to engage fishers and farmers and prepare them to execute localized action plans.

He pointed out that while the Philippines accounts for only 0.3% of the world’s total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, it bears the brunt of the consequences of climate change.
 
“Our country is sinking four times faster than the global average. Annually, we are confronted with extreme floods and droughts as well as increasing severity and frequency of typhoons. Millions of lives are at stake. Clearly, climate change is very real to the Philippines,” he said. — VBL, GMA News