Higher financing sought to address climate change

MANILA, Philippines — Advanced economies should ramp up their climate financing for developing countries like the Philippines amid the worsening impact of climate change globally.

The Asian Peoples’ Movement on Debt and Development (APMDD), a regional alliance of peoples’ movements, is calling on rich countries to immediately increase their financing of climate actions in less developed ones.

This came following a dialogue on the new collective quantified goal (NCQG) on climate finance under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in line with the 2015 Paris Agreement.

The Paris Agreement stipulates setting a new NCQG prior to 2025 and is built on the foundation of the pledge of $100 billion per year by 2020 by rich nations as climate finance for developing countries.

APMDD coordinator Lidy Nacpil maintained that it is crucial to ensure climate justice for developing countries through the urgent delivery of scaled up climate finance.

“Trillions of dollars are needed annually by developing countries to adapt to and build resilience in the face of climate change impacts, recover from the loss of lives and damage to property, infrastructure, ecosystems and economies, and ensure a just and equitable transition,” Nacpil said.

Nacpil said funds being mobilized are nowhere near the scale of the needs of developing countries.

President Marcos earlier said addressing climate change was one of the priorities of his administration, particularly on reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Last month, the US government committed to boost its funding support to address the climate change problem in the Philippines following a meeting between Department of Finance chief Benjamin Diokno and US Ambassador to the Philippines Marykay Carlson.

Carlson said the US is willing to scale up climate financing support to the Philippines amid the threat of climate change, especially as the country is one of the most vulnerable to climate crisis.

APMDD said there is a need to step up climate adaptation finance but the alliance noted that rich industrialized countries continue to spend billions of dollars on the fossil fuel industry.

Prior to the pandemic, data showed that rich nations contributed $80 billion in climate finance but most of the fund came from public grants or loans, transferred either from one country to another directly, or through funds from multilateral development banks.