Several stakeholders gathered last week to draw up strategies aimed at reducing the impact of climate change on the economy and the marginalized sectors of the Philippines.
Representatives from 25 national agencies convened for a two-day workshop at Crowne Plaza Manila Galleria in Quezon City that seeks to strengthen national capacity in modeling the economic impacts of climate change and inform just transition measures.
“The long-term nature of climate impacts demands long-term thinking and it demands models that will help us craft resilience strategies that look beyond short-term pressures and safeguard future outcomes,” said Ellen Anthony, Second Secretary of Climate, United Kingdom Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office.
“The UK is committed in partnership with the Philippines to mitigate the impacts of climate change. We know that the cost of inaction outweighs cost of investments,” she said.
The workshop’s relevance followed recent events, as the country faced significant disruptions from typhoons and the southwest monsoon just a week prior.
Edwine Carrie, Deputy Resident Representative of United Nations Development Program Philippines, reflected on the human cost of disasters.
“When the country loses one billion per year because of typhoons, it affects the most underserved segments of the population, not only in loss of life but also loss of livelihoods. My personal hope is that this model will help improve decision-making to ensure that communities at the local level are better equipped to deal with the economic impact of disasters,” he said.
The workshop activity is a key initiative of the Climate Finance (CFN) project implemented by the (UNDP) in the Philippines in partnership with the Department of Finance (DoF), with financial support from the UK FCDO through the Climate Action for a Resilient Asia (CARA) program.
UNDP Philippines News
The workshop brought together technical experts and policymakers from key government agencies to explore a new analytical and modelling framework that simulates climate change’s impact on the economy.
John Adrian Narag, director of DOF’s Climate Finance Policy Group, stressed the importance of collaboration.
“This two day workshop is an invitation for all of us to foster synergy in developing policies that we hope can strengthen fiscal resilience against risks of climate change and disasters,” he said.
Central to the workshop was a state-of-the-art modeling tool, developed as part of a regional initiative, which integrates climate and economic data to simulate different climate scenarios and assess their implications for national development.
The Philippines is one of five pilot countries participating in this initiative, positioning it at the forefront of climate-informed economic planning.
The event concluded with a call to action for continued collaboration, practical application, data sharing, and model calibration to ensure the tool’s relevance to the Philippine context.
“While the tool will generate results on the impact of climate change on various economic sectors, it will be each country that will generate such results,” said Cristina Gregorio, Regional Climate Finance Specialist of
“Exercising ownership in the process, each government, each agency or ministry will also have the freedom to determine the policy recommendations based on the results, she said.” UNDP Philippines News
