Legarda files resolution urging CCC to submit PH climate pledge

22 JANUARY 2021 — House Deputy Speaker and Antique Representative Loren Legarda filed yesterday a resolution urging the Climate Change Commission (CCC) to submit the Philippines’ pledge to the Paris Agreement and in turn “address the climate emergency” and “drive the country towards a sustainable pandemic recovery.”

House Resolution No. 1494 calls for the country’s Paris climate pledge, formally known as a Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC), to convey the “highest possible climate ambition in reflection of the government’s strong commitment to contribute to global efforts to advance climate justice.”

The CCC has vowed earlier this month that the country’s first NDC “shall convey the shared vision and collective strategies of our sectors for the immediate pursuit of low carbon development and a sustainable future for the Filipino nation. It shall also communicate to the developed world our readiness for transformative green investments and finance, consistent with the President’s call for climate justice.”

“There is no place for fear or hesitancy in expediting our country’s NDC submission,” Legarda explained in House Resolution No. 1494, saying that “it will drive all sectors of the economy to strengthen its capacity to reduce disaster risks and adapt to climate change into a thriving a post-crisis scenario that turns crisis into opportunity,”

She also pushed for a “more inclusive and consultative process from a wide range of stakeholders” in the process of doing the NDC, recognizing civil society calls for urgency, ambition, and justice to be the three bottomlines for the country’s NDC.

“It is unfortunate that we begin the New Year with the news that the Philippines failed to submit its Nationally Determined Contribution to the Paris Climate Agreement and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). All Parties to the Agreement and the Convention were asked to submit their NDCs last December 31, 2020. The Philippines is among the countries that failed to make a submission,” according to a joint statement released last January 11 by the Philippine Movement for Climate Justice, Aksyon Klima, Asian People’s Movement on Debt and Development, Greenpeace Philippines, Oxfam Philippines, and other networks.

“With the pandemic, we have come to realize that our world is not that advanced and resilient as we thought it to be. Our social and economic systems are fragile. However highly interconnected, we are only as strong as the most vulnerable among us. The best way forward is to heed science and take decisive actions for our collective recovery that also secures a cleaner, safer, and more resilient world for all,” Legarda said at the recently-concluded 2021 Legislators’ Forum of the International Renewable Energy Agency.

“The latest science conveys that for the world to achieve the 1.5 degrees Celsius global warming threshold of the Paris Agreement, carbon emissions should fall by 45% by 2030 from 2010 levels and should reach net-zero by 2050. The Philippines—a highly climate-vulnerable archipelagic country with only 0.3% share in the global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions—recognizes the opportunities for a sustainable and inclusive recovery a low carbon development path offers,” she added in the forum.###