Conferences and Commitments: The COP26 and the Philippine NDC

The Philippines, as party to the Paris Agreement, has committed in 2015 to submit Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) that will highlight climate actions, polices, and projects that governments intend to implement as a response to the increasing climate and as a way to meet the global gets that the Paris Agreement set out to accomplish, one of which is the reduction of global greenhouse gas emissions to well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, and to pursue efforts to limit that increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

In April 2021, a year later than the 2020 deadline, the Philippines submitted its NDC to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The Philippine NDC was a 5-paged document which discussed the context of the Philippines, mitigation and adaptation efforts, and its commitment to the flight to combat the climate crisis. Among the most salient parts of the document were the commitment to a projected GHG emissions reduction and avoidance of 75%, of which 2.71% is unconditional and 72.29% is conditional, representing the country’s ambition for the period 2020 to 2030 for the agricultural, wastes, industry, transport, and energy sectors. It also conveyed the country’s mitigation commitments and brought forth the challenges and requirements for adaptation, including addressing residual loss and damage.

It is to be noted that while the 75% commitment is a welcome effort, the fact that much of its allocation is conditional has made environmental activists and groups cautious, as the achievement of a conditional commitment presupposes the existence and continuity of external aid through loans, grants, and other such funding mechanisms.

That being the case, the civil society organizations (CSOs) who attended the COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland (who were given Observer badges) looked closely into the stances of the Philippine government, and on the wins and opportunities in what is now the Glasgow Climate Pact, arguably the most important climate document since the Paris Agreement. The CSOs, which include the Manila Observatory, had four (4) things they wanted the Parties to focus on during COP26: loss and damage, climate justice, higher ambition, and climate finance.

Loss and damage refers to the harms caused by anthropogenic climate change. It means that climate impacts have exceeded the adaptive capacities of communities and ecosystems – this is most apparent in climate-vulnerable countries such as the Philippines, where natural disasters have increased both in intensity and frequency. This also includes sea level rise and rising temperatures. Now a thematic pillar under the UNFCCC because of Article 8 in the Paris Agreement, the question moving forward has become thus: how do we address loss and damage? While the Warsaw International Mechanism of Loss and Damage which was established in COP19 was created to deal specifically with issues relating to loss and damage, there has been very little movement in that regard, which was a cause for disappointment for many developing countries, who called for a financial mechanism for loss and damage.

Two things, however, small wins, but wins regardless, were made during Glasgow, regarding the outcomes on loss and damage: first, a strengthened Santiago Network and its technical support functions (during the negotiations for which both Atty. Vice Yu and Usec. Wimpy Fuentebella of the Department of Energy, negotiated and intervened respectively), and a two-year dialogue on the issue.

On the matter of climate justice, the inclusion of “climate justice” in the Pact was lauded, but many have lamented that it was insufficient to address the climate crisis; as what is needed is an acknowledgment from developed countries that they have historically been the biggest polluters, and that there is a need to address this in order to transition into a future that is green, sustainable, and just.

With regard to higher ambition, more than 110 nations covering 85% of the world’s forests made renewed commitments to end deforestation by 2030. This was the first major deal of the Conference. The countries also made a global methane pledge, where countries pledged to cut methane emissions by 30% by 2030, compared to 2020 levels. As of writing, the Philippines is signatory to both campaigns. Moreover, in a historically important move, coal and fossil fuels were mentioned in the Pact, though a last-minute intervention by India watered down the strength of the provision by changing the phraseology from “phase out” to “phase down”, and therefore par. 36 of the Pact now provides “36. Calls upon Parties to accelerate the development, deployment, and dissemination of technologies, and the adoption of policies, to transition towards low-emission energy systems, including by rapidly scaling up the deployment of clean power generation and energy efficiency measures, including accelerating efforts towards the phase-down of unabated coal power and inefficient fossil fuel subsidies, recognizing the need for support towards a just transition.” (Citations omitted, emphasis mine)

While all these efforts are laudable, and the Glasgow Climate Pact is a welcome document, it is far from adequate. To keep the 1.5 degree Celsius goal alive, increased reduction year after year, and continuous higher ambitions are of great importance.

Finally, the issue on climate finance. The $100 billion per year goal, which was initially negotiated during COP15 in what is now known as the Copenhagen Accord, was supposed have been achieved by 2020, the objective of which was to help developing countries with their mitigation efforts, and will come from a variety of sources. However, this has not yet been achieved. Therefore, there is continuous clamor to ensure that in the succeeding years, this commitment is fulfilled.

During the informal stocktaking session towards the end of the Conference, Climate Change Division of the DENR Director Albert Magalang made an intervention for the Philippines, and, by extension, developing countries. He said that risk management is the only real solution to the climate problem, and that developing countries should be allowed to avoid potential emissions by helping them to shift their technological basis to climate benign ones before they contribute some more to the global climate problem. He reiterated the need for finance to buy technologies in order to transform. Avoidance, for him, is a legitimate technical action in the risk management continuum which will be cost-effective for all in the long run. Moreover, he said that greenhouse gas and climate impact mitigation are not the ultimate goals, sustainable development is. By the end of his speech, he asks, can mere palliative greenhouse gas reductions ensure overall mitigation and sustainable development?

Historical as it was, especially in the midst of a global pandemic, the COP26 is just one of the many climate conferences where countries come together and negotiate on how best to combat the climate crisis. The most important things are not derived and will certainly not stop inside the plenary halls of the Blue Zone, where all the negotiating took place. In fact, what is most important is what is to be done in the 11 and a half months after COP.

What is most important, in the discussion of moving forward, is whether countries truly fulfill their pledges, and whether they implement projects and plans that have for its main goal the achievement of the 1.5 degrees Celsius goal set out in Paris. What’s most important, now that the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has come out, is how governments can ensure genuine participation of those most affected by climate change, especially the indigenous peoples and the youth, in order to meet the global goal.