RP calls on Asean members to build on common interest on climate issue

ECHOING President Arroyo’s appeal for leaders of Southeast Asian nations to “speak with one voice” on the serious problem of climate change, the Philippine delegation attending the climate meetings called on their counterpart to now work together to build on common interest on the climate issue.

In an Asean delegation meeting, Philippine Climate Change Secretary and head of delegation Heherson Alvarez sought the establishment of the “Asean interest” on climate change in order to register a cohesive vote before the anticipated 16th Conference of Parties (COP-16) by the end of this year in Mexico.

The meeting was held at the sidelines of the 11th session of the Ad Hoc Working Group on Further Commitments for Annex I Parties under the Kyoto Protocol (AWG-KP 11) and 9th session of the Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action (AWG-LCA 9) in Bonn, Germany, over the weekend.

“The Asean must be a dialogue body. Because our nations, all the Asean nations are now trying to seek for a common denominator, for common prosperity, for common viewpoint and clarity on complex problems for the development of international relations,” Alvarez told the members of the Asean delegation.

“And since we as delegates are engaged in that most serious task of climate change, we should seek to be like the leaders of our motherland seeking for a common accord and must continue to talk to each other,” Alvarez also said. “Let us build the habit of thinking as Asean.”

Alvarez stressed that in the midst of some unsettling propositions in the climate-change talks, the Asean, as a group, must stand together through a common interest that can serve as its capital to strengthen the push for deep and early cuts in greenhouse- gas (GHG) emissions by developed countries, as well as the attainment of a legally binding agreement with the continuation of the Kyoto Protocol beyond 2012.

“We’re talking [about] many viewpoints, [and to] many delegations, but we already have a common capital and our capital is the fact that we’re trying to establish our common interest, our Asean interest,” Alvarez noted.

“I think we should get together when a serious vote is taken. Before Cancun we should try to see whether we could help each other more and work together more than we can work with other groups. It is going to be very inspiring if in this very serious global problem, we can begin to build the components of this Asean aggregation,” he added.

In June last year, the Philippines submitted interventions before the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Secretariat that call for deep and early cuts of emissions by industrialized countries of more than 30 percent from 2013 to 2017; more than 50 percent from 2018 to 2022; and at least 95 per cent by 2050, all from 1990 levels.

Alvarez believes that the deep and early cut in GHG emissions by developed countries is especially significant in the wake of the worst flooding and tropical storms that hit the Philippines and other Southeast Asian countries “with an unparalleled ferocity.”

The Copenhagen climate talks in December 2009 yielded unsatisfactory results, and fresh rounds of climate meetings initiated by the UNFCCC are set to begin in Bonn by middle of this year prior the COP-16 in Mexico in December

At the conclusion of the Asean Summit on April 9, leaders issued a statement calling for a legally binding global agreement on climate change, asked developed countries to take more ambitious commitments and set specific and binding targets to reduce GHG emissions, citing the vulnerability of the region to climate change. –Businessmirror