Spotlight on PH in vulnerable nations’ fight vs climate change
The Philippines earned praises for its “exemplary performance” in leading the Climate Vulnerable Forum (CVF), an international partnership of developing countries that are highly vulnerable to global warming.
Member states of the CVF lauded the Philippines for serving as head of the group of nations in the past 19 months, citing the country’s “exemplary performance” during the 21st Conference of Parties (COP21) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in France, December last year.
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“The Philippines has set the bar very, very high. This forum has achieved a huge momentum and the Paris Agreement session, the COP21 has been exemplary to demonstrate what the Philippines and the CVF have achieved,” said Shiferaw Teklemariam Menbacho during the CVF Seminar Retreat in Tagaytay Friday.
Menbacho is the Minister of Environment, Forestry and Climate Change of Ethiopia and the incoming CVF chair.
The Philippines has been the CVF chair since January 2015 and is scheduled to turn over the position to Ethiopia at the end of the Climate Policy Forum at the Philippine Senate in Pasay City on Monday, August 15.
“In taking forward the work of this important group, we will strive to continue to strengthen our impact. The lives and livelihoods of our people are at stake and we cannot gamble that away,” Menbacho added.
Included in the CVF’s agenda is the campaign for to limit the threshold of global temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius, the recognition and accountability to the human rights implications of climate change, as well as additional financial, capacity and technological support to developing countries to for assistance in their efforts to reduce emissions and adapt to climate change.
Revolution
For his part, Emmanuel De Guzman, secretary of the Climate Change Commission (CCC), likened the fight against climate change to the Philippine Revolution.
He urged other member states to continue being “revolutionaries fighting for the planet’s future” and end the record-setting temperature increases the world has experienced in the past few years.
“Like them (the revolutionaries of the Philippine Revolution), we, too, are fighting for the future … for the fate of the entire world and the billions of people who call our planet home,” De Guzman said.
“This is a revolution we in the CVF must lead because we are the countries that will fall first if the 1.5 degrees global warming limit of the Paris Agreement is breached,” he said. Jaehwa Bernardo, INQUIRER.net trainee/IDL
