PRESIDENT Rodrigo Duterte urged the Senate to carefully study whether to ratify the Paris agreement on climate change, particularly since it would likely impact on the economic development of the country.
“I have misgivings about this [agreement],” Duterte said at the launching of a biomass power plant in Maguindanao, urging senators to clarify how he can build industrial zones if they ratify the agreement.
“My plan is to put up industrial zones everywhere. If you will not allow us to reach parity… You are already there and we are still there, then I’m saying that’s crazy. I will not agree to that.”
Duterte clarified that while the Philippines has signed the Paris Agreement last April 22, the country has not ratified or acceded to the agreement contrary to some claims.
“There is no treaty [yet] to honor. We have not [ratified] the treaty,” Duterte said, noting that the refusal of industrialized countries to agree to higher cuts in carbon emissions is “crazy.”
“There is really [climate] change but who caused it, not us,” He said. “All those years of industrialization in the 1960s and 1970s, China, America and Europe were the ones who kept on belching black smoke.”
“You have reached your current status at our expense,” Duterte told industrialized counties. “You were the ones who first spewed and spewed. Your footprints are there. We here are just starting to head toward where you are now,” Duterte added.
Even France which is pushing for the ratification of the agreement after it hosted the 21st Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, ratified the agreement only last June 15.
In fact, of the 178 parties that signed the Paris agreement, only 20 countries have ratified it and all of them have negligible greenhouse gas emissions.
On the other hand, none of the 10 countries with the highest emissions in 2010—China, United States, European Union, India, Russia, Japan, Brazil, Germany, Indonesia and Canada—have even acceded to the Paris agreement.
The international deal aimed at curbing emissions was signed in Paris in December last year, but it cannot become effective until 55 countries accounting for 55 percent of global greenhouse-gas emissions have fully approved it.
The Paris pact calls for capping global warming at well below two degrees Celsius, and 1.5 Celsius if possible, compared with pre-industrial levels.