DAVAO CITY—President Duterte has been asked to declare a state of climate emergency in the country, and to hold accountable companies that still manufacture and distribute fossil fuels and push climate urgency at the center of his administration’s decision-making.
The environmentalist group, Greenpeace Philippines said Typhoon Tisoy (international code name Kammuri) was the 20th typhoon to hit the country this year, “highlighting how the Philippines is among the most vulnerable to severe weather and its impacts, with Filipinos again under threat from extreme rainfall, flash floods and landslides.”
“As it lashes [in] the Philippines, forcing tens of thousands of Filipinos to flee their homes, Greenpeace Philippines has today launched an open letter addressed to President Rodrigo Duterte urging him to declare a climate emergency,” it said.
“We call on President Rodrigo Duterte to make a climate emergency declaration in the form of an executive order that ensures climate change and its impact on the lives of Filipino people is a top government priority,” it added.
The declaration should contain the following actions: put climate urgency at the center of all policy decision-making from a local to national level; hold fossil-fuel companies accountable for their role in driving climate change and inflicting harm on the Filipino people; demand other countries, particularly industrialized nations, to enhance their emissions reduction ambitions in order to meet the Paris Agreement’s aim to limit global temperature rise within 1.5 degrees Celsius; ensure the Philippines’s rapid and just transition to a low-carbon pathway through a massive uptake of renewable-energy solutions; and phase out coal.
It said the Philippines has been facing this climate emergency for decades now, “with millions across the country left to suffer the catastrophic effects of extreme weather, made stronger and more deadly by climate change.”
“Year after year, Filipinos are identified among the most impacted globally by this crisis, an emergency situation made worse by the big polluters, fossil-fuel companies who have lied and covered up about how their operations have been driving the climate crisis and who have been raking in trillions in profits at the expense of millions of people who suffer from its impacts,” said Lea Guerrero, country director of Greenpeace Philippines.
Image credits: Nonie Reyes