One good thing about our new president is that he frequently makes bold statements about important topics, prompting all of us to try to understand that topic which otherwise would have been ignored. This past week, it was the turn of the Paris Agreement on climate change. President Duterte was quoted as saying that he would not honor the agreement because it would stymie our industrialization. A few days later, he was more circumspect and asked the Senate to review the agreement carefully. In his State of the Nation Address yesterday, President Duterte made it clear that he believed global warming was real and that it must be addressed. He stressed, though, that the world must solve the problem fairly.
In several talks I gave this past week, I made it clear that our interests since the beginning of the climate change negotiations in 1990 have remained constant: how to make sure that the threat of climate change is averted and that its worst impact does not affect us. We also wanted to ensure that the global mitigation interventions to address climate change benefit our sustainable development and not hinder it. Hence, the Philippine delegation pushed for certain points and fought against some—what we call our red lines—in the Paris agreement because they will affect our capacity to face climate change in specific ways. We crafted our position on mitigation, human rights, adaptation, loss and damage, technology transfer, finance and capacity building with a vision on how their inclusion in the historic climate change deal would be captured in real programs and policies to be implemented on the ground.
The Philippines, as chair of the Climate Vulnerable Forum, an advocacy alliance of 43 developing, middle-economy and small island states, has campaigned for the temperature cap of 1.5 degree-Celsius goal since COP20 in Lima, Peru. In Paris, we did Herculean work to achieve this goal. Our paid off as 112 countries eventually supported it, with France and Germany joining the call by the penultimate day of the conference.
It is true that the current commitments will still lead to a 2.7 degrees Celsius increase in temperature. That is not acceptable. But the review mechanism agreed to in Paris and built regularly into the agreement is its saving grace. If we do it right, by the second or third cycle, we could be on track to the 1.5 degrees goal.
We need funds not only to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, but also to adapt to the effects of climate change, which could range from longer, drier spells to intense, more frequent rainfall. These events have potential pronounced impacts on the income of farmers and fisher folk as the former would have a more difficult time growing their crops, while it would be dangerous and too risky for the latter to brave stormy seas. Their decreased production could then harm food security and aggravate poverty.
In Paris, our adaptation team worked hard to make sure that the funds would be grants-based. Complementing their efforts was the work of the finance team, which supported the inclusion of a provision in the climate change deal that aims to achieve a balance between mitigation and adaptation in the allotment of climate finance. The technology transfer team, on the other hand, pushed for the provision of funds for all stages of technology cycle so as to guarantee that the support will not just be given for research and development but also implementation.
Not all challenges posed by climate change could be adapted to, however. This is why we need to address loss and damage separately. It is one big win for us and other vulnerable countries that the Paris agreement contained a whole article (Article 8) about it.
The preamble of the Paris Agreement captures not only environmental concerns but also strongly mandates countries to “respect, promote and consider their respective obligations on human rights” with particular reference to rights of indigenous peoples. The Philippines provided the leadership to make this happen.
There is a reason why we wanted to emphasize this link between human rights and climate change. We will better understand why we are doing what we are doing—we want this agreement to be successful because we—including farmers, young people, survivors of disasters not just in the Philippines but in other countries—all of us, including the one reading this—have the right to a cleaner, greener world, and so do the generations to come.
Similar but less controversial to human rights was the Philippine leadership and advocacy of the inclusion of language ecosystems integrity in the Paris Agreement. We successfully argued that climate change was not just a carbon agreement but that its impact and the impact of mitigation interventions have serious consequences on ecosystems, natural resources, and biological diversity.
The big question for us these past few years is whether we should even have these multilateral processes at all as they can be complex and unwieldy. Paris was a strong and loud confirmation for such processes. Without them, both small and the least powerful nations will have no say at all on global decisions. If you were a negotiator from those countries, as we were, it was very clear that we able to have a big footprint on the agreement, that we shaped it as much as the biggest players did.
If global climate change politics were reduced to bilateral or regional relationships, only the big emitters and those with deep pockets would have a say. Who wants that?
While we believe Paris is the maximum and limit of what governments, as a collective, can agree on now, the Agreement is still not adequate to address climate change effectively. But while it is imperfect, the Paris Agreement is not bad; it is certainty not a least common denominator agreement. As United States Secretary John Kerry argued during the Paris negotiations, what we agreed to in Paris was the most differentiated agreement ever. This made it possible for all countries to unite for the common purpose of addressing climate change. As someone who has been involved in this effort for 25 years, it was a big thing to see this happen.
So should we ratify the Paris Agreement?
I can imagine the Philippines deciding not to do so. If that is the decision, however, let us be ready to address climate change on our own. Isolation is the result of not ratifying what is likely going to be a universal agreement.
If we ratify the agreement, it is important to consider very carefully our Nationally Determined Contribution. In my previous column, I explained that President Aquino offered an ambitious reduction commitment but one that was contingent on the availability of support—finance, technology transfer, and capacity building. There is nothing to stop us from lowering our ambition even as it will mean diminished leadership in the climate negotiations. The important thing is to commit to something we can really implement and which is good for us.
Should we ratify the Paris Agreement? It is in our interest to do so.
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