Camarines Sur 2nd district Rep. LRay Villafuerte has has expressed "cautious optimism" over the result of the 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference or Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCC, more commonly referred to as COP27.
“In what has been seen by certain quarters as a breakthrough for the most climate-vulnerable countries like the Philippines that need an ever-increasing amount of money to fight off planet heating, COP27 ended last weekend with an agreement for the world’s biggest carbon polluters to help compensate developing states for the weather disasters wrought on the latter by fast-rising global temperatures," Villafuerte said in a statement.
“While we should welcome this fresh pledge of financial support for high-risk nations in fighting climate change,” said the Bicol solon, “I am cautiously optimistic that such a COP27 pledge will actually help the world move fast and real enough to meet the declared global resolves in past COPs to limit planet warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius of pre-industrial levels and for the biggest GHG emitters to cough up a combined $100 billion yearly for the climate mitigation and adaptation programs of island nations and other highly vulnerable countries.”
The COP27 took place in Egypt from Nov. 6 to 18, 2022.
The Philippines is a member of the Climate Vulnerable Forum (CVF), which groups together more than 50 states across the world that are the most vulnerable to climate-induced calamities.
Earlier, Villafuerte said that President Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr.’s resolute advocacy of urgent climate action on the international stage has given the Philippine leader the unofficial tag of climate change champion.
Villafuerte, majority leader of the powerful Commission on Appointments (CA) in the House of Representatives, described climate change champion as "point person of high-risk developing economies long seeking financial and technical aid from wealthy nations responsible for unbridled GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions".
His remarks notwithstanding, he noted that “The newly-promised fund for climate financing is relatively small and, worse, is expected to come much later rather than sooner".
“This is because after reaching an accord at the last minute to finally put up this ‘loss and damage’ fund as a sort of reparation without any mention of liability, the COP27 country-participants agreed to put off by at least a year the operationalization of this compensation mechanism in setting up a ‘transitional committee’ to recommend proposals on its funding for submission and discussion in the next gathering (COP28) set in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE) beginning Nov. 30, 2023,” he said.
And judging from the initial pledges made during COP27, this proposed fund will not be substantial enough, “looking like peanuts when one considers that the promise made back in 2009—and broken till now—was for $100 billion in annual funds starting in 2020 to help vulnerable states prepare for and adapt to worsening climate disasters,” he said.
Villafuerte pointed out that by the time COP27 wrapped up last weekend, aggregate pledges from country-participants for “loss and damage’ financing reached only $213.5 million.
Based on reports, the preliminary pledges have come from the United States ($100 million), Austria ($50 million), Canada ($18 million), Denmark ($13 million), New Zealand ($12 million), Ireland ($10 million), Scotland ($8 million) and Belgium ($2.5 million)—a total of $213.5 million.