PHL urged to submit climate pledge to Paris Agreement

ALEADER of the House of Representatives has filed a resolution urging the Climate Change Commission (CCC) to submit the Philippines’s climate pledge to the Paris Agreement.

In House Resolution 1494, House Deputy Speaker Loren Legarda of Antique called for the country’s Paris climate pledge, formally known as a Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC), to convey the “highest possible climate ambition in reflection of the government’s strong commitment to contribute to global efforts to advance climate justice.”

The CCC had vowed earlier that the country’s first NDC “shall convey the shared vision and collective strategies of our sectors for the immediate pursuit of low carbon development and a sustainable future for the Filipino nation. It shall also communicate to the developed world our readiness for transformative green investments and finance, consistent with the President’s call for climate justice.”

She said, “It is unfortunate that we begin the New Year with the news that the Philippines failed to submit its Nationally Determined Contribution to the Paris Climate

Agreement and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change [UNFCCC].”

All parties to the agreement and the convention were asked to submit their NDCS last December 31, 2020.

But the Philippine Movement for Climate Justice, Aksyon Klima, Asian Peoples’ Movement on Debt and Development, Greenpeace Philippines, Oxfam Philippines said the Philippines is among the countries that failed to make a submission.”

“There is no place for fear or hesitancy in expediting our country’s

NDC submission,” Legarda said.

“It will drive all sectors of the economy to strengthen their capacity to reduce disaster risks and adapt to climate change into a thriving a post-crisis scenario that turns crisis into opportunity,” she added.

The lawmaker also pushed for a more inclusive and consultative process from a wide range of stakeholders in the process of doing the NDC, recognizing civil society calls for urgency, ambition, and justice to be the three bottomlines for the country’s NDC.