IN updating the Philippines’ “Nationally Determined Contributions” under the Paris Agreement, the Climate Change Commission will be doing the country a great service if it develops the NDCs into a truly “transformative” climate change action program. The CCC should also ask each government agency to come up with a concrete, measurable and time-bound implementing program on how to meet the agency’s climate change adaptation/mitigation target or goal. Without such a program, the CCC’s system of “tagging” various government programs as climate-change-responsive is meaningless.
The point is that the government should go beyond making routine rhetorical statements on climate change mitigation, adaptation and adjustment, if these are not backed up by clear, doable and fully-budgeted programs of action. Remember the Neda declaration after the Yolanda disaster in 2013—Build Back Better, to enable the country to manage future climate-related calamities better. One policy response under this BBB program is the launching of the National Greening Program with an ambitious goal of planting over 1.5 billion trees. The NGP was further “enhanced” under the Duterte administration. And yet, when Ulysses came in November last year, we saw the deteriorating forest landscape: forest lands without forests. The NGP and its enhanced version have failed to deliver reforestation. In short, there is a huge gap between rhetorics on resiliency building and actual accomplishments in environmental renewal and climate change mitigation and adaptation.
The gap is also illustrated in another major area of economic life, energy development. In 2008, the government enacted the Renewable Energy Act for the purpose of accelerating the utilization of renewable energy and reducing Philippine dependence on dirty carbon-emitting fossil fuel, which accounts for almost 10 percent of the country’s imports. But what has been happening? A study by Engineer Jose Logarta and the late Engineer Roberto Verzola (FES, 2017), shows how the explosive growth of coal and gas power industry had reduced the share of renewables from 45 percent in 1990 to 24 percent in 2016. This happened despite the global trend in favor of the renewables and the reality that renewables such as solar have become cheaper compared to coal and gas.
Last year, the DOE announced a moratorium on the development of new coal plants. Fine. However, it was silent on whether it will phase out the existing coal plants, old and new, that will enlarge the share of coal (once the big new coal plants come on stream) and make the country dependent on coal until the 2030s and beyond.
Relatedly, the DOE has been pushing for incentives for those investing on natural gas development, including the establishment of terminals and pipelines around the country. With the Malampaya gas field drying up, natural gas, like most of the coal consumed locally, shall come in as expensive imports. And like coal, the “cleaner” natural gas is also GHG-emitting. Where then is the resolve to go renewable and green?
Clearly, the challenge to the CCC and other government advocates of greening is to give life to the feel-good rhetorics on mitigation and adaptation by walking the talk. The CCC and other agencies should also give special attention to the situation of the poor. The CCC lists “poverty reduction” under the “non-negotiable elements” of the NDC program. But this is not fleshed out. As it is, we have seen how in the name of environmental renewal, the poor are further marginalized. This is clearly illustrated in the failure of the DOTR to come up with a “just transition” program for the poor jeepney drivers and operators, who have been asked to switch to the expensive e-jeepney models sans any realistic program of assistance. Incidentally, there are no clear strategies in the CCC presentation of the NDC during the CCC-CSO consultation meeting last December on how climate adaptation and mitigation measures can benefit the poor first and foremost.
If the CCC has difficulty imagining how the NDC can be strategized in support of poverty reduction, it can link the program on disaster risk reduction and resilience building to the attainment of the UN sustainable development goals, SDG by SDG. For example, on SDG 1 (end poverty in all its forms), the primary target of DRRM and resilience building programs should be the impoverished communities, such as developing programs on how to preserve jobs and livelihoods, how to strengthen the poor’s access to social protection and basic services, how to fortify whole communities against climate risks, etc. The Covid pandemic magnified these problems, especially the lack of social assistance and empowerment programs for the informals and their communities. The government response to the Covid pandemic last year also shows weak appreciation by government officials of the situation of the poor as reflected in the exclusion of many poor who are not listed as beneficiaries of the limited amelioration assistance. There is no safety nets for the displaced who lost jobs and livelihoods. A holistic DRRM program for the poor is in order.
The CCC can relate each SDG to the NDC by formulating transformative policy to meet the adaptation and sustainability challenge in poor communities, for example the promotion of sustainable agriculture as guided by geo-hazard mapping and scientific organic agricultural practices as well as by socio-economic reforms such agrarian reform, agricultural credit reform, etc.This shall fall under SDG 2 on food security and ending hunger.
SDG 3 is on health for all. One way of achieving this for the poor is building fully-funded primary health-care facilities in each barangay in accordance with the vision of the 1978 Alma-Ata WHO Declaration on Health for All.
The point is that the CCC and other government agencies will have their hands full formulating programs reducing poverty that are intertwined with the battle against climate change. These programs should go beyond the level of rhetorics. They should be clear, doable and time-bound pro-people transformation programs, complete with just transition programs for those adversely affected. And yes, they should involve the poor, meaning they are not only informed and consulted but also engaged as partners in the formulation and implementation of various mitigation and adaptation programs.
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