ADB programs $10 B for PH climate finance

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) will allot $10 billion worth of funding for the Philippines’ climate finance starting in 2024 until 2029. The five-year climate-related financing was announced late Monday, Dec. 4 (Philippine time) from Dubai, UAE, by ADB President Masatsugu Asakawa at a High-level Dialogue on Finance Coalitions at COP28 in Dubai.

Asakawa is confident the funding “will help the Philippines implement its commitments to climate action under the Paris Agreement.”

“The battle against climate change will be won or lost in Asia and the Pacific and nowhere is this more evident than in the Philippines,” said Asakawa in the statement.

He added that he is “pleased (that) ADB will program $10 billion in climate finance for the Philippines under the new country program we are developing with the government. ADB will also continue efforts to mobilize additional climate finance from the private sector, cofinancing partners, and other sources.”

According to ADB, the important dialogues in Dubai was attended by Philippine Finance Secretary and ADB Governor Benjamin Diokno, Philippine Environment Secretary and head of the COP28 delegation Maria Antonia Yulo-loyzaga, and ministers from other countries.

ADB noted that the Philippines “is among the countries most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.”

It added that the Global Climate Risk Index ranked the Philippines fourth in terms of countries most affected by extreme weather globally from 2000 to 2019.

“Poorer households are disproportionately affected, especially in urban areas with less infrastructure, and along the country’s vast coastal areas,” it said, adding that ADB’S climate finance in the Philippines “will help improve the climate resilience of communities, ecosystems, and the economy.”