Test case for ecology financing

Bangkok—Non-government organizations from Southeast Asian nations have pressed developed countries to shoulder the burden of climate change effects in the region as they use the Philippine experience during the onslaught of Ondoy and Pepeng to push for more financing and cooperation.

At yesterday’s session of the Asean Peoples’ Forum, Dorothy Guerrero of the Focus on the Global South underscored the need for Asean leaders to put more pressure on industrialized countries to make reparations for their greenhouse emissions.

“The issue of justice cannot be separated from climate change. Those who are most responsible for the climate crisis—mainly rich countries and corporations—must bear most of the burden in resolving the crisis especially when those who have the least control over the situation [the impoverished and marginalized people of the world] face the most immediate impacts of climate change,” she said.

President Gloria Arroyo, in a recent statement, said the country’s case will also be cited as “proof of climate change adaptation” as she called for a stronger Asean alliance to face a climate change crisis.

The Asian Peoples Solidarity for Climate Justice described the anti-climate change financing that industrialized countries owe the region as an “ecological debt.”

“As such, reparations must include full financing without conditions and the transfer of appropriate and environment- friendly technology without the restrictions posed by intellectual property rights to enable the people to deal with the impacts of climate change,” the group said.

Asean leaders are scheduled to sign a declaration on climate change during the 15th Summit in Hua Hin this weekend, with President Arroyo expected to make a strong pitch for anti-climate change financing following the massive damage to infrastructure and agriculture brought about by storm Ondoy and typhoon Pepeng.

“Although we can tell ourselves and be proud that with our total gas emissions constituting less than 1 percent of the total emissions from the whole world, the Philippines is not a climate maker, but we are a climate taker. Even if we say we contribute less than 1 percent to climate change, yet we suffer as much or maybe even more than climate makers because we are an archipelago,” Arroyo said.

After the Asean Summit, Mrs. Arroyo will sign into law the Climate Change Act of 2009, which aims to make climate change a centerpiece of the government’s disaster preparedness program in the national and local levels, on Oct. 30.

The country also plans to tap the Kyoto Protocol’s Adaptation Fund to finance the rehabilitation and reconstruction of some P30-billion damaged infrastructure and agriculture.

Presidential adviser on global warming Heherson Alvarez has also written United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change executive secretary Yvo de Boer to make the fund available for the Philippines.

“These escalating storms are clear manifestations of climate change and the Philippines, although having a miniscule carbon footprint, is suffering from its early brunt brought about by excessive emissions of carbon dioxide by industrialized countries,” Alvarez said. –Joyce Pangco Pañares, Manila Standard Today