MANILA, Philippines — Governments represented at the climate summit in Egypt must deliver on promised financial and technical assistance to countries suffering the worst impacts of climate change and take action to cut planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions more quickly, Filipino climate advocates said.
The COP27 climate talks kick off Sunday in the resort city of Sharm El-Sheikh against the backdrop of extreme weather events across the world and an energy crisis resulting from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
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From November 6 to 18, governments and members of civil society organizations will again tackle measures to keep global warming under control and protect communities from the catastrophic impacts of the climate crisis.
"This COP27 is going to be very important for us Filipinos because we have been seeing increasing extreme weather events that are leading to losses and damage—economic and non-economic," Ivan Enrile, climate justice program manager of IBON International, told Philstar.com.
"We are in a period where we have very scant resources, the prices of commodities are rising, and a lot of people do not have jobs. The impacts of climate change are amplifying those development concerns," he added.
The United Nations-brokered climate conference comes a week after Severe Tropical Storm Paeng (international name: Nalgae) triggered landslides and flash floods across the archipelago, killing at least 154 people. Scientists have warned that storms are becoming more powerful as the world continues to heat up because of climate change.
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Call for reparations
“After the devastating impacts of Typhoon Paeng, it’s clearer that the demand for reparations should be central to the Philippine agenda,” Kalikasan People’s Network for the Environment national coordinator Jon Bonifacio said.
"The top polluters need to pay up for the damages their emissions are causing," he also said.
Climate finance is expected to be a central conversation at this year’s climate summit. The flow of money from countries that got rich from burning fossil fuels would allow climate-vulnerable countries like the Philippines better prepare for the impacts of climate change.
IBON International’s Enrile said governments must strike a balance on the finance going to mitigation and adaptation. Campaigners said that adaptation has long received less attention than mitigation.
According to a new report by Oxfam, the Philippines was fifth among Asian countries that received the highest amount of climate finance. However, most of the $7.8-billion climate finance it received from 2013 to 2020 was in the form of debt.
The Philippine delegation to COP27 led by environment chief Maria Antonia Yulo-Loyzaga said it will "continue calling on developed countries to step up to these obligations and deliver without delay on their commitments on climate finance, technology transfer, and capacity building."
The country’s delegation plans to contribute most to the workstreams dealing with Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, adaptation, climate finance, and loss and damage.
The success or failure of COP27 is likely hinged on getting wealthy countries to deliver reparations—or loss and damage compensation. Loss and damage refers to the costs that some nations are already facing because of a heating planet.
"Will it be on the agenda? Will there be a decision to negotiate a standalone finance facility on loss and damage?" asked Tony La Viña, associate director for climate policy and international relations of Manila Observatory.
At the climate talks in Glasgow last year, developed nations blocked the establishment of a funding facility on loss and damage. They opted to initiate a "dialogue" on the topic in future talks.
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Leave fossil fuels in the past
In Sharm-el Sheikh, nations will focus on discussing the implementation of the 2015 Paris Agreement in their home countries. The main aim of the Paris Agreement is to keep global temperature rise well below 2 degrees Celsius and drive efforts to limit it to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
In a report released in April, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change stressed that capping warming to just 1.5 degrees Celsius involves "rapid and deep and in most cases immediate greenhouse gas emissions reductions in all sectors."
Center for Environmental Concerns-Philippines executive director Lia Mai Torres said COP27 should result in "binding, clear, concrete, and drastic emissions cuts from top emitters."
For Gerry Arances, executive director of the Center for Energy, Ecology, and Development, the climate-fueled disasters that ravage countries and the increasingly volatile power prices amplifiy the need to leave coal, gas, and other fossil fuels in the past.
"Fueled by all these, Philippine delegates must come to COP bannering ambitious calls for a rapid end of fossil fuels, beginning with historically polluting nations," Arances said.
"We must also demand for the concretization of how resources and capacity needed by developing nations like ours to advance a swift energy transition will be delivered," he added.
President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. has frequently mentioned the need to address climate change in his speeches. But climate and environment groups said that none of the chief executive’s rhetoric has translated into meaningful action so far.
READ: In first 100 days, Marcos talks climate change but action still on back burner