Camarines Sur 2nd district Rep. LRay Villafuerte has hailed President Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr. for his big achievement in connection with climate change mitigation during the latter's just-concluded state visit to China.
According to Villafuerte, President Marcos "pulled off a coup" in securing almost $14 billion worth of pledges from renewable energy (RE) investors in his three-day state visit.
“The President has walked the talk on decarbonization with his coup in Beijing of hauling in close to $14 billion in investment pledges from Chinese companies, which will give a big boost to our country’s ambitious goal of GHG (greenhouse gas) emission reduction and avoidance," the veteran solon said in a statement.
Villafuerte, the National Unity Party (NUP) president, said Marcos's push for RE investments to achieve a greener economy and reduce our country’s carbon footprint "was in sync with his steady pitch in all his foreign trips since he assumed the presidency for climate justice".
He praised the Filipino leader for securing funding support from the world’s affluent economies--which are usually the big GHG emitters--for programs that would help high-risk developing nations like the Philippines shift to cash-intensive RE sources and better adapt to worsening natural disasters set off by planet heating.
He said this is significant "given that no such financial aid for climate justice is apparently coming anytime soon from the world’s biggest GHG emitters or carbon polluters, judging from the agreement—or lack of it—that was reached at the end of last year’s COP27 in Egypt".
Villafuerte was referring to the outcome of the 27th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP27) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The COP27 summit was held last Nov. 6 to 18 at the resort city of Sharm el-Sheik in Egypt.
At the end of that summit, wealthy countries agreed for the first time ever to put up a “loss and damage” fund for vulnerable nations like the Philippines that bear the brunt of climate change, but avoided making firm commitments on how much exactly would be given and when such would be released to the intended beneficiary-countries like the Philippines.
COP27 ended with an agreement for country-participants to create a “transitional panel” that would work on the “loss and damage” details in time for formal presentation at COP28, which is due on Nov. 30 to Dec. 12, h in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE), Villafuerte said.