The Finance Department on Friday joined President Benigno Aquino III’s call for a sweeping review of the energy policy, setting the path for national approach away from carbon and toward green energy development.
Finance Secretary Cesar Purisima, chairman of the V20 Group, which now expanded to 43 countries most systemically vulnerable to the consequences of climate change, called for a rethinking of the global economy through V20 initiatives, like climate accounting and carbon pricing.
“Apart from its human costs—which ought to be a convincing enough reason for decisive global action in and of itself—climate change is a dead weight to the global economy. Business as usual no longer presents a strong business case for anyone. Shifting to clean, renewable energy is the best investment we can make for our future,” Purisima said.
“To this end, the V20 Group is developing concrete ways to reorder incentive structures governing human behavior in the global economy. Changing how we value and price the costs of human [in]action to climate change ought to make a green energy shift the only sensible choice to make for everyone,” Purisima said.
Purisima made the statement after the Climate Change Commission issued a resolution signed by outgoing President Aquino calling for a review on coal plants in the next six months.
The Center for Energy, Ecology and Development, a newly-established policy research institution helmed by veteran advocates for people-centered energy, ecology and development, along with its affiliate organizations in civil society and communities in the Philippines, said this was a good step toward shifting away from dirty energy to a more sustainable and clean resource in the country.
Studies showed that climate change-related disasters claimed over 1.35 million lives and affected an average of 218 million annually over the past two decades.
Developing countries bear more than half the economic impact of climate change over 80 percent of its health impact, with annual climate change-related economic costs of $44.9 billion projected to increase ten-fold by 2030, he said.
Data from the Global Partnership for Preparedness, a group recently launched by V20 and several UN agencies, showed the global economic impact of climate change since 2005 breached $1.3 trillion.
Purisima earlier said in a keynote address at the Future of Asia Conference in Tokyo that climate change had already held back global development by close to 1 percent of the world GDP, based on studies.
Purisima also referred to a paper published in the scientific journal Nature estimating that overall economic production would fall by about 23 percent by 2100 if the climate kept changing under the current models.
The study also projected that climate change would reduce average incomes in the poorest 40 percent of countries by 75 percent in 2100, while making 43 percent of the global population poorer in 2100 than today.
“While we in the V20 Group work with experts and multilaterals on risk pooling mechanisms as well as other mitigation and adaptation measures, it is important for developing economies to get efficient access to financial resources to adapt and shift towards a green economy,” he said.
“Transitioning towards a green economy requires a lot of money, we must admit. It costs even more for developing countries. But the cost of saving our planet can never be more than the cost of losing it. This is why we need global collaboration on climate finance to fund a more sustainable future,” Purisima said.