Camarines Sur Rep. LRay Villafuerte has cited President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s determination to seek international compensation for high-risk countries over “loss and damage” due to global warming.
Villafuerte said Marcos’ call aired during his just-concluded trip to Brussels, Belgium for more advanced economies to pay for the adverse effects of climate change boosted the President’s “growing stature as a champion of developing nations demanding payment for damages resulting from global warming.
Marcos, who had made climate change one of his key advocacies in all of his overseas trips since assuming office last June 30, has “pushed the envelope in his just-concluded journey to Belgium by pitching for more concrete guidelines on how affluent economies that are the world’s biggest greenhouse gas (GHG) emitters could compensate highly vulnerable economies like the Philippines that have contributed little to planet heating for their loss and damage resulting from the increasingly deadlier climate-induced natural disasters,” Villafuerte said.
“In making such a pitch for loss-and-damage compensation, whose concept was agreed upon by participant-countries in last month’s COP27 summit in Egypt, President Marcos has focused global attention anew, whether he likes it or not, on his rising international stature as the champion or unofficial spokesman of the world’s most vulnerable economies that are seeking climate justice from wealthy nations like those in Europe that have grown even richer from being the heaviest carbon polluters,” Villafuerte added.
He was referring to the landmark global accord on a “damage and loss” funding mechanism for rich nations to compensate economies hardest hit by more frequent natural calamities, which was reached at the end of the 27th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP27) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
This amount is intended for financing reconstruction efforts, among others, in developing economies like the Philippines whose physical and social infrastructures have been damaged by the increasingly worsening natural calamities wrought by climate change.
COP27 was held on Nov. 6-18 at the resort city of Sharm el-Sheik in Egypt.
Villafuerte lauded Marcos for “earning an early win on his climate justice advocacy while still in Brussels after getting the support of European Council (EC) President Charles Michel on his proposal to quickly operationalize the green fund on climate change and the ‘damage and loss” policy.”
Villafuerte said the President has “walked the talk” on his support for reducing the Philippines’ carbon footprint as one of his numerous achievements in his trip to Belgium was securing investment pledges from European companies engaged in renewable energy (RE) and sustainable infrastructure solutions.
Citing an OPS report, he said the Spanish conglomerate Acciona, for one, has committed to invest in the country’s RE sector during the meeting between its chairman Jose Manuel Entrecanales and Mr. Marcos on the sidelines of the ASEAN-EU Commemorative Summit.