The Philippines will share the inroads it has made in translating theories on addressing climate change into actionable projects on the ground with other countries, starting with the member nations of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean).
The Department of Finance (DOF) stressed the move is to help fast-track adaptation and mitigation efforts meant to avert catastrophic global heating.
Carlos Dominguez, DOF secretary, said Asean countries, which, like the Philippines, are highly vulnerable to the adverse effects of global warming, “must vigorously escalate their respective mitigation and adaptation initiatives and immediately move to concrete steps to save the planet.”
“We are most open to sharing expertise, best practices, and technologies with the rest of the region. We hope our initiatives could be replicated and scaled by other countries,” Dominguez said during the 3rd Climate Smart and Disaster-Resilient Asean forum yesterday.
“The Philippines will do all these with a great sense of urgency. We see global warming as an existential threat to our archipelago. We will respond to the challenge with everything we have,” he added.
With the Philippines sinking at a rate four times faster than the global average and confronted with increasingly more severe typhoons, and other extreme weather events, Dominguez said the country wants to set a clear example of how a highly vulnerable country can move ahead with its climate action ambition.
The DOF said that as a new entrant to the Climate Change Performance Index (CCPI), the Philippines at number 23 has outperformed its peers in the Asia-Pacific Region in terms of climate protection performance.
The CCPI tracks the performance of 63 countries and the European Union on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, renewable energy use and climate policy.
At the CSDRA forum, Dominguez shared some of the initiatives that the Philippines is currently undertaking to move ahead with its climate ambition.
These include the launching of its Sustainable Finance Roadmap to provide a masterplan that will create a synergy between public and private investments in greening the financial system, and the planned issuance of its first-ever sovereign green bonds.
Dominguez pointed out that the country is ahead in the use of climate finance, with Philippine companies having issued $4.8 billion-worth of Asean-labelled Green, Social and Sustainability (GSS) bonds since 2019.
This figure is equivalent to 29 percent of the current total Asean-labelled GSS Bond issuances, the highest in the Asean region.
Meanwhile, on Dominguez’s initiative, the Climate Change Commission has put together a group of national technical experts who represent all corners of the Philippines to advise the commission and engage fishers and farmers in local communities to prepare them to adapt and mitigate the impacts of global warming.
To show to the world how the Philippines is acting with urgency, Dominguez said it has committed to reduce its GHG emissions by 75 percent in 2030, one of the most ambitious Nationally Determined Contributions put forward by any country, even though it is one of the lowest GHG emitters at only 0.3 percent of the world’s total.
He said the Philippines has also been active in representing the position of developing countries in various meetings and forums at the two-week COP26 summit in Glasgow, Scotland.
“The Philippine delegation to COP26 was insistent that those who have emitted and continue to emit the most greenhouse gases must bear the largest financial burden in our transition to carbon neutrality. This is the essence of climate justice that the most vulnerable countries have long been fighting for,” Dominguez said.
