‘Business as usual’ feared as COVID-19 response, recovery derail climate action plan
June 5, 2020 – 3:14pm
MANILA, Philippines — The coronavirus pandemic is hampering the country’s move to review and revisit its climate plans as the government faces the task of containing the crisis and restarting a badly-damaged economy in the weeks and months to come.
At present, the Climate Change Commission—tasked to coordinate and evaluate the government’s programs and action plans on climate change—is still in the process of finalizing the country’s nationally determined contribution (NDC) in reducing greenhouse gas emissions for sectors such as agriculture, waste, industry, transport, forestry and energy.
An NDC is basically how the government plans to help address the climate crisis.
The health crisis that has so far infected over 20,000 people in the Philippines is threatening the process of setting an “ambitious yet realistic NDC target.”
“The pandemic has certainly made this painstaking process of NDC formulation more difficult to do,” Climate Change Commissioner Rachel Anne Herrera told Philstar.com in an online exchange.
“While this is extremely important, ensuring the recovery of those infected with COVID-19 and the safety of everyone in the community has been the immediate priority of our government and perhaps for other states for the past months and weeks,” she added.
Philippine commitment
In 2015, the Philippines—an archipelagic nation vulnerable to disasters made worse by climate change—committed to cut by 70% its carbon emissions by 2030. But the emission reduction target was conditional on assistance from the international community
Studies, however, found that emission reduction targets submitted by countries put the world on track for warming of 2.7 to 3.7°C, far above the Paris Climate Agreement goals of limiting global warming well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels while pursuing efforts for a tougher ceiling of 1.5°C.
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, UN’s climate science advisory panel, said carbon dioxide pouring into the atmosphere must be halved by 2030 and reach “net zero” by mid-century if the goal of 1.5°C is to be met.
In March 2017, President Rodrigo Duterte signed the historic Paris agreement on climate change. He earlier threatened he would not honor the pact believing it would hurt the Philippines’ effort to industrialize.
The Senate unanimously voted to ratify the agreement within two weeks.
Climate actions among COVID-19 casualties
Global efforts to address the climate crisis are among the casualties of COVID-19. International meetings related to climate such as the critical United Nation’s climate summit—where nations were expected to ramp up plans to fight the warming of the planet—have been disrupted by the pandemic and has been pushed back to November 2021.
Another 2020 deadline in the original schedule was the submission of revised NDCs of countries.
But while the COVID-19 crisis is seen to hinder the country’s process of finalizing its targets, the CCC said it is eyeing to complete the NDC “as soon as possible as we put a premium on establishing the technical integrity of the NDC coupled with political ownership.”
“The CCC sees these components as critical to the sustainability of the NDC given its long-term and iterative nature and in consideration of the modalities, procedures and guidelines (MPGs) on transparency and reporting. This will ensure that the NDC will be embedded into the core programs of the government,” Herrera said.
For Greenpeace Philippines, the disruption of environmental-related international meetings should not threaten efforts to meet climate and biodiversity pledges.
“The current pandemic should actually be the impetus to strengthen the efforts of countries on these issues and to even go beyond the commitments laid out before the pandemic happened. COVID-19 has changed the playing field and the priorities and assumptions on which the commitments in the past were made,” Lea Guerrero, Greenpeace Philippines country director, said in an online exchange.
‘Better’ normal
Guerrero said that the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the devastating impacts of the current “business” framework of extraction-production or trade-consumption-disposal on people and the ecosystems.
Hundreds of billions will go to infrastructure projects and support for the recovery of the private sector as the country revives an economy slammed by the health crisis. But the Greenpeace country director warned against this.
“There is a real danger that the government and private sector could reinvest in a business-as-usual scenario, including more dirty investments, and will exacerbate inequitable socio-economic conditions by developing private-for-profit services that neglect the needs, concerns and rights of women, indigenous peoples, workers and the marginalized communities,” Guerrero said.
“This is exactly what the government needs to avoid,” she added.
Greenpeace stressed the government must put climate action and the vulnerable sectors at the center of its plans for social and economic recovery from COVID-19 by funnelling funds to programs that will stimulate renewable energy uptake and infrastructure that will enable the reduction of vehicles on the road.
The group added that the government’s recovery plan must include a plan for the transition to low-carbon and climate-friendly mobility systems and must bring about the shift to ecological agriculture systems from climate-intensive industrial agriculture and food systems.
“Instead of ‘restarting the economy,’ the government needs to ‘reshape the economy’ to invest the vast amounts of finance they are earmarking not to where they have traditionally placed it in the past, but to areas and sectors that will resolve long-term challenges such as the climate crisis, planetary limits and environmental destruction, as well as poverty and injustice,” Guerrero said.
CCC, for its part, said it is actively engaging with House lawmakers deliberating the Better Normal Bill “so that the new law shall have a holistic approach rather than solely focusing on social distancing and hygiene.”
“To address the pandemic, policies must promote a thriving natural environment and reduce people’s vulnerability to future crises caused by climate change, natural hazards, and man-made disasters,” Herrera said.
