RP wants access to climate fund

MANILA, Philippines - With the country still reeling from the catastrophic impacts of storm “Ondoy” and typhoon “Pepeng,” the government appealed yesterday to the United Nations to open up the Climate Change Adaptation Fund (CCAF) to help nations like the Philippines adjust to climate change.

The Philippine delegation to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) negotiations cited the need to “operationalize with urgency” the CCAF because the recent disastrous storms that brought “abnormally huge rainfalls” not only in the Philippines but also in Vietnam and Cambodia were clearly manifestations of creeping climate change.

Presidential Adviser on Global Warming and Climate Change Heherson Alvarez, also the chief climate negotiator, explained that the CCAF was established under the Kyoto Protocol to finance concrete adaptation projects to help developing countries cope with climate change’s effects.

UNFCCC formally launched adaptation fund in May 2008 and the processing of grants was supposed to begin in April 2009 but it has fallen behind schedule, according to Alvarez.

He said the CCAF is now estimated at $60 million from voluntary contributions and a two percent share of proceeds from the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM).

The adaptation fund is under the supervision of the Kyoto Protocol’s Board.

Alvarez said that considering the number of CDM projects in the pipeline, the adaptation fund is estimated to balloon to about $80-300 million before 2012.

At the same time, Alvarez pushed for a “Voluntary Emission Reduction & Climate Risk Insurance,” which seeks to establish a global levy of $2.00 per ton of carbon dioxide, or $0.50 cents/liter of gasoline, whereby 60 percent will be left to the country taxed, while 40 percent will go to a Multilateral Adaptation Fund.

“The fund, which is expected to earn $34 billion annually, may be used for relief and rehabilitation of affected areas. Archipelagic nations like the Philippines are most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. We welcome both funding schemes as a way to help us cope with droughts, mudslides and rising seas, among others,” he said.

Moreover, the Philippine delegation has proposed a Climate Risk Insurance for Food Production Systems and Livelihood Infrastructure, an insurance program for farm-to-market roads, irrigation systems, farmlands, fishponds, and other food production systems, with the insurance premiums to be paid from the Multilateral Adaptation Fund.

And to moderate the escalating storms ravaging small archipelagic island nations, the Philippines has been calling for deep and early cuts in carbon dioxide emissions by Annex I countries of at least 30 percent from 2013 to 2017; 50 percent from 2018 to 2022; and at least 95 percent by 2050, all based on 1990 levels.

The Philippine delegation has just participated in the recently concluded Bangkok Climate Change Talks and is once again headed for a five-day climate discussion in Barcelona, Spain next month.

The climate talks held in Bangkok the last two weeks were the second to the last meeting to draft a new climate change treaty, which will hopefully commit countries to cut further their carbon emissions amid escalating climate change.

World leaders are anticipated to vote on the draft agreement at the UN Conference of Parties (COP-15) in Copenhagen this December.

To date, Ondoy’s damage to infrastructure and agriculture has been estimated to have already reached more than P10 billion: P6.766 billion for agriculture and P3.41 billion for infrastructure.

Meanwhile, Pepeng’s damage was pegged at around P1.49 billion: P1.25 billion for agriculture and P232 million for infrastructure.

The two typhoons flooded an estimated 260,136 hectares of rice fields that devastated an equivalent harvest of 375,086 metric tons (MT) worth P6.4 billion. The destroyed palay is 2.14 percent of the full-year rice output target of the country.