Phl To Share Best Practices On Climate Change Thrust

Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III said Tuesday the Philippines will share the inroads it has made in translating theories on addressing climate change into actionable projects on the ground with other countries, especially its fellow members in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), to help accelerate adaptation and mitigation efforts meant to avert catastrophic global heating.

Photo Insert: Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III also headed the Philippine delegation to the recent 26th United Nations (UN) Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26).

Dominguez said ASEAN countries, which, like the Philippines, are highly vulnerable to the adverse effects of global warming, “must vigorously escalate” their respective mitigation and adaptation initiatives and “immediately move to concrete steps to save the planet.”

With the Philippines sinking at a rate four times faster than the global average and confronted with increasingly more severe typhoons, and other extreme weather events, Dominguez said the country wants to set a clear example of how a highly vulnerable country can move ahead with its climate action ambition.

“We are most open to sharing expertise, best practices, and technologies with the rest of the region. We hope our initiatives could be replicated and scaled by other countries,” Dominguez said during the 3rd Climate Smart and Disaster-Resilient ASEAN (CSDRA).

“The Philippines will do all these with a great sense of urgency. We see global warming as an existential threat to our archipelago. We will respond to the challenge with everything we have,” added Dominguez, who is also chairperson-designate of the Climate Change Commission (CCC) and head of the Philippine delegation in the recent 26th United Nations (UN) Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) held in Glasgow, Scotland.

The two-day CSDRA virtual conference aims to bring together leading academic scientists, researchers, scholars, government agencies, non-government organizations, and other stakeholders to share their experiences and research results on aspects of climate change and disaster risks in South East Asia.

As a new entrant to the Climate Change Performance Index (CCPI), the Philippines at No. 23 has outperformed its peers in the Asia-Pacific Region in terms of climate protection performance.

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