By Heherson Alvarez
First of two parts
Climate Change Consciousness week is held in November through the proclamation by President Gloria Macapagal- Arroyo, through my recommendation as Presidential
Adviser on climate change, to raise awareness and generate action to respond to global warming threats. This year, its observance becomes even more significant because an Emergency Climate Alert for a higher ambition to fulfill the Paris Accord has been underscored by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and other well-acknowledge Science Research Institutes.
COP 25 is being held from December 2 to 13 in Spain, due to certain political disturbances in Chile. Spain, with the UNFCCC secretariat, has generously provided the crucial platform to form together a resilient and responsive global will to mitigate and adapt to the deepening climate- change catastrophes.
It is imperative that the climate change commission, in defining our Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC), provides a doable climate program that supports the administration’s job-creation, even industrialization programs. A joint Congressional public hearing is essential for a fully transparent harmonized process with vital inputs from all concerned agencies and relevant civil society sectors.
One of the keys to the Philippines’s long-term industrial growth—sustainable development and resiliency —is a mix of energy sources which is job-creating, that become less expensive over time, and which also has fewer negative impacts on climate and the environment, threatening lives, food security, health, infrastructure and livelihood.
We are entering a new era of grave disruptions that include increasingly destructive impacts of an overheating Earth with climate change, of supertyphoons, ocean surges and super drought, raging forest fires, and landslides, consequently deepening poverty and hunger. Carbon dioxide and fossil polluting gases have been the culprit of global warming. Fortunately, the rise of alternative clean energy technologies as solar, wind, hydro waste and geothermal are readily accessible. UN Secretary General António Guterres in the recent Asean meeting stressed the need to stop our coal addiction.
It is auspicious that the President underscored his concern for climate change in his speech in Russia. In Asean, the President underscored the value of protecting biodiversity as we address climate change. He has also manifested political will in rehabilitating our polluted water bodies, in particular, Boracay and Manila Bay. The President also expressed his openness to address the plastic crisis that identifies the Philippines as No. 3 in the list of the most guilty polluting countries. Cop 25 is particularly directed to the blue planet concerns, confronting global warming, destruction of corals, acidification of our seas, plastic pollution, sea level rise and ocean surges.
The enormous popularity of the President can provide the opportunity for him to serve as a caring guru to protect our highly vulnerable archipelago, and seek Senate ratification of a Unesco covenant for the underwater heritage protection.
What can be realistically accomplished within the remaining 2 1/2-year term of the Duterte administration focused on specific policies, actions and programs that are doable and achievable?
The twin pillars of eliminating the scourge of drugs and corruption while preventing further environmental degradation through decarbonization will lift the nation and its leadership to a rendezvous with destiny.
I. The basic problem
1. The Philippines is 1 of the top 3 countries most threatened by climate change. We need to climate proof our people against the inevitable impacts and risks, to take full advantage of new financing, technology and other job opportunities that it will create and attract green investments, clean technologies and green building.
2. We also need to manage properly the ongoing shift in energy technologies to minimize stranded costs, technology lock-in and other risks, as well so as to take full advantage of the decreasing costs, lower pollution, more green jobs and businesses, and other benefits, as well as opportunities these newer technologies will create.
To attain the administration’s “AmBisyon Natin 2040 [Malasakit, Pagbabago at Kaunlaran]” under this new era, the Philippine energy sector faces a fundamental dilemma:
- Should it continue to rely mainly on traditional sources like coal and baseload planning, which planners are already familiar and comfortable with? Or,
- Should it adopt newer technologies and planning methods, such as new renewables and storage, and flexible power plant planning that are cleaner, which create more jobs, and which are becoming increasingly cheaper over time?
Our energy sector today unfortunately inherited from the previous Aquino administration a bias for the first option, despite its disadvantages especially under the new alternative energy era. The previous administration’s Philippine Energy Plan 2012 to 2030 had energy efficiency and renewable-energy targets that would have propelled the country toward this transition. Unfortunately, it failed to attain the energy efficiency and renewable-energy targets, but overachieved in its coal targets instead, revealing its hidden bias. We will work closely with the Department of Energy on a climate-smart approach to the energy transition and seek to assist in the process so that the Duterte administration does not repeat the egregious error of the Aquino administration.
II. Addresing the problem
Our answer to the problem must be a two-track energy policy. One that does not disrupt our economic growth while it builds up national capacity for sustainable development through increasing reliance on renewable energy. It allows us to fulfill our commitments under the Paris Climate Accord based on climate justice and the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities. It also allows us the resiliency to chart a low-carbon path according to our Intended Nationally Determined Contribution of Priorities (INDCP).
This two-track policy will create jobs, pull down electricity prices, and provide ordinary people with a cleaner, healthier living environment. It will also avoid locking in our country for the next 40 years to power plants that are highly polluting and whose increasing costs can derail the industrialization efforts of the administration.
This can be accomplished by a simultaneous
approach that builds on existing and committed (construction ongoing)
conventional power plants to make them more dependable, more efficient and less
polluting and builds up new power capacity for sustainable growth through gains
in energy efficiency and increasing
reliance on renewable energy.
III. Basic Objectives:
1. To promote specific climate actions, policies and programs (APPs) to help sustain a strong economy through job growth and lower electricity prices over the next five years.
2. To
use these APPs to leverage investment, technology and capacity-building in
order to capture large-scale mitigation and adaptation
opportunities for the country.
3. To bolster biodiversity conservation through protection of the forest and oceans as carbon sinks to help reduce greenhouse gases.
4. To increase via riverbank solar or river basins another 1.5 million hectares from the 6 million existing hectares of irrigable land. Currently, only 1.5 hectares are irrigated. By irrigating 1 hectare of land, it is as if you have 3 hectares, harvesting three times a year instead of merely depending on rainfall.
IV. Proposed response
A. Mitigation Initiatives: Reducing greenhouse-gas emissions.
The following prototypical mitigation projects can be prioritized for carbon capture and reduction to meet our international climate- change commitments. They, at the same time, help in adaptation by creating jobs, alleviating poverty, enhancing food security, and promoting biodiversity conservation, confronting vector borne and climate caused respiratory, gastro-intestinal diseases, cancer and heart ailments.
1. Expand a forestation and reforestation projects by another 1.5 million hectares, with improved monitoring and evaluation component and by stopping deforestation. Forests provide economic, social and environmental benefits. As a bonus, they also sequester huge amounts of carbon dioxide. Deforestation produces almost twice as much carbon dioxide as the energy sector.
To be continued
Heherson T. Alvarez is former senator and Isabela congressman who served as secretary of environment, as well as climate change secretary. He is the founder of Earthsavers, honored as a Unesco Dream Center and is currently chairman of the Advisory Board of Climate Institute, among the oldest International NGO based in Wahington, D.C., Tel. 0917-8711161 or 0815-8983947.