Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. believes that the ongoing climate change conference in Glasgow is the world's "last-ditch effort" to come up with climate solutions to save the planet.
"This is the world’s last-ditch effort to save the planet. Let’s get that Paris Rulebook done. Succeeding COPs will be fine-tuning solutions or accelerating them," Locsin said in a statement at the 26th Session of the Conference of the Parties (COP26) to the United Nations (UN) Framework Convention on Climate Change on Oct. 31.
"Think of an airplane out of control on a downward spiral. The crash is coming; all we have is a thin hope that the same people responsible for this predicament, and now at COP26 will be the hands that land the plane safely," he added.
"Please, we beg, let’s not succumb to the temptation to use this forum for recriminations instead of solutions; practical and never at others’ expense," he went on.
COP26 brings parties together to accelerate action towards the goals of the Paris Agreement and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. It is held from Oct. 31 to Nov. 12.
Locsin also underscored during the opening of the summit that climate change is the humankind's abuse of nature hitting back on us.
The Philippines' top diplomat stressed that climate change and accelerated global warming were stirred by human hands.
"Climate change is not nature hitting back at us for hitting it hard. Nature is just there, a gift to mankind with or without a Giver whatever your faith or lack of it. It is not nature but our abuse of it blowing back on all of us," he said.
Locsin also pointed out President Duterte's statement during the 75th UN General Assembly saying that the climate vulnerability of the Philippines, an archipelagic state with a coastline of 36,000 kilometers situated along the typhoon belt of the Pacific, is undeniable.
"Our people, battered and bruised by brutal typhoons that come our way year after year, yearn for climate justice. Homes levelled, people drowned, lands forsaken, livelihood painfully lost — this is not a way to live. But for Filipino families, visited by at least 20 typhoons a year as a matter of course, this has become a lesser life lived,” Duterte stated.
Locsin also highlighted the President's call for commitment among developed countries in the nations' agenda in climate change by quoting him, “the greatest injustice here is that those who suffer the most are those the least responsible for this existential crisis... but here we are now at a critical tipping point, where failure to act leads to cataclysmic consequences for the whole of humankind. Developed countries must fulfill their longstanding commitment to climate financing, technology transfer, and capacity-building in the developing world. This a moral obligation that cannot be avoided.”