In a life-threatening emergency, urgent and resolute action is imperative. This is the reason why hospitals have ERs and intensive-care units for critically-ill patients.
The world today is facing an existential threat called global warming. Scientists of the UN Environmental Program keep reminding us that a surge in global temperature by over 2.0 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial era will be catastrophic to humanity. It will unleash more violent storms, prolonged droughts, sea rise (that can swallow whole islands and coastal areas), and so on and so forth.
To prevent this apocalyptic scenario from happening, the UN Member States adopted in 2015 the Paris Agreement, an agreement requiring the signatory States to commit themselves to a twin program of GHG/carbon-reduction and climate adaptation/readiness. Climate change is a global problem, which cannot be stopped without the concerted efforts of all countries.
In line with this, a number of countries have been declaring “climate emergency” as a means to mobilize their populations behind a sweeping climate mitigation-adaptation program backed up by the maximum financial resources possible. In Asia, Japan and South Korea are showing the way: they are restructuring their economies to make them climate resilient and they are abandoning their dependence on coal and fossil fuel by investing heavily on clean energy.
In the case of the Philippines, the policy response is puzzling. The Philippines is in the world’s list of the top five most vulnerable countries to climate change. This is the reason why the Philippine delegation to the Paris Convention in 2015 fought hard not only for the adoption of a global compact to address global warming but also for the inclusion of clauses in the said agreement that recognize the moral and financial responsibility of developed countries. As the world’s leading carbon emitters, these countries have the obligation to help developing countries in covering the cost of the climate adjustment measures.
Now, what is puzzling?
The Philippines, which played a leading role in the 2015 Paris Convention, has become less visible in the follow-up activities that signatory countries must undertake in relation to the agreement. One of these activities is the submission every five years of updated and consolidated “Nationally Determined Contributions” (NDC).
The Philippines missed the 2020 deadline for the submission of its NDC.The Philippine Movement for Climate Justice (PMCJ) and its partner civil society and peoples organizations (CSOs/POs) lamented this failure of the Climate Change Commission (CCC) to make the NDC submission. They explained the importance of NDC as follows:
“NDCs articulate the clear and substantive commitments of governments to the global effort to combat the crisis of climate change….
“NDCs reflect commitments to empower people and communities to deal with its impacts, ensure adaptation and climate resilience efforts; make financial flows consistent with climate-resilient development and decarbonization, and stop global temperature rise at the safest level still possible—below 1.5 degrees Celsius. NDCs are also measures of commitments to pursue immediate and long term actions that are vital to addressing the manifold emergencies that are exacerbated by the climate crisis—such as the urgent and immediate recovery from the unprecedented Covid-19 global pandemic and its economic fall-out.”
The truth is that the CCC appears to be in a slow-motion mode in the drafting of the NDC. In July 2019, a PMCJ delegation, together with the team of the late Sen. Heherson Alvarez, went to the CCC head office to dialogue with the CCC Commissioners and to seek information on how the CCC is updating the country’s NDC. No materials were given and none of the Commissioners met with the PMCJ-Alvarez group.
It is now clear why the CCC Commissioners failed to meet with the PMCJ-Alvarez group. No NDC draft was ready and available in 2019. The CCC started consultations on the proposed NDC only in late 2020. In fact, the CCC consultation with the country’s environmental groups was arranged only on December 23, 2020.
The December CCC-CSO consultation process, a two-hour event, was also shallow. No draft NDC was circulated before and during the consultation. Inputs came mainly in the form of an overview powerpoint presentation on climate change and the Paris Agreement by the CCC, followed by summary presentations by select government line agencies such as the DENR and DOE on what they deem the country can contribute under the Agreement. In short, there was no time and opportunity for the participants to scrutinize if the proposed “contributions” being presented in outline form are meaningful, inclusive, substantive and truly contributory to the global battle against climate change.
The point is that the NDC should be a collaborative effort of all sectors because climate change is the concern of the whole society. The CCC itself has written that the NDC should secure the support of the people through a whole-of-government-whole-of-society approach. The CCC also listed four pro-people “non-negotiable elements” in the drafting of the NDC: sustainable industrial development, poverty eradication and provision of basic needs, securing social and climate justice, and energy security.
Why then the failure to communicate and do consultation on time? Why the failure to be fully transparent?
The NDC should be a product of an exhaustive process of popular consultation. After all, it involves the Filipino people who are facing an emergency situation on various fronts—climate, health and economic. The NDC should be a people’s survival roadmap under climate change.