Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III asked European investors to support the country’s first offering of at least $500 million in green bonds in the offshore debt market to help raise funds for clean energy projects and other sustainable initiatives to mitigate the impact of the worsening climate crisis.
Dominguez said Friday the sale of the debt securities, known as environmental, social and governance sovereign bonds, would be done “in the coming weeks.”
The Philippines’ maiden issuance of these green bonds forms part of the series of initiatives that the Duterte administration is undertaking to implement concrete actions in the fight against climate change, given the “disappointing” response of Western countries on the call to honor their $100-billion financing commitment to climate-vulnerable developing economies, Dominguez said.
“We cannot wait for the bureaucrats in the industrialized world to take their sweet time splitting hairs on the idea that the countries that polluted and continue to pollute the most must bear the greater part of the financial burden of reversing global warming that they started 175 years ago. This is, for us, the essential meaning of climate justice,” said Dominguez in a pre-recorded message to the European Chamber of Commerce of the Philippines.
His message was delivered during the ECCP’s webinar with the theme “The Golden Age of Sustainability: Greening the Philippines.”
Dominguez said that while the Philippines contributes only 0.3 percent to the global greenhouse gas emission, it boldly committed to reduce these by 75 percent in 2030, which would be done through actionable projects.
“We are disappointed, however, that the Western countries with the greatest volume of emissions were far less ambitious in their commitments to the global effort to rescue the planet. These include many European countries,” Dominguez told the ECCP.
Dominguez said the Philippines is determined to move ahead with fulfilling its climate ambitions, “on its own, if necessary,” although he pointed out that as an emerging economy, the country could not fully achieve its carbon-reduction commitments without financial support from wealthier countries.
To proceed with its climate ambition and pave the way for the green bonds’ issuance, the government inaugurated its Sustainable Finance Framework last year.
Dominguez said the government was also working with the Asian Development Bank and some private sector partners in developing the innovative Energy Transition Mechanism project to help the Philippines accelerate the retirement of coal plants in the country by at least 10 to 15 years on average and boost the growth of renewable energy using an equitable, scalable and market-based approach, starting possibly in Mindanao.
With assistance from the United Kingdom, the government launched last year the Philippines’ Sustainable Finance Roadmap to set the guiding principles that will create the environment for greener policies; the mainstreaming of sustainable finance; and a pipeline for investments that will help the country reduce its carbon footprint even as it raises its economic output.
Dominguez said the government is also pushing a bill banning single-use plastics and put together a new team of Filipino experts at the CCC who represent all corners of the Philippines to engage Filipino fisherfolk and farmers and prepare them to execute localized action plans.
At the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties held in Glasgow last year, Dominguez headed the Philippine delegation and led the call for climate justice from industrialized economies.