THE selection of the Philippines as host of the Loss and Damage Fund (LDF) Board will not only broaden the country’s access to international funds for fighting planet warming, but will also prop up the role of President Marcos as champion or spokesman for the world’s climate-vulnerable economies.
These economies, according to Camarines Sur Rep. Luis Raymund Villafuerte, are seeking ample financing from rich industrialized states that “largely responsible for the Earth’s rising temperatures.”
Villafuerte in a statement said the recent choice of the Philippines as host of the 26-member board of the LDF, “will definitely increase and accelerate the Marcos administration’s access to annual financing that the world’s most industrialized—and richest—nations have long committed for climate-proofing least developed countries like the Philippines along with small island developing states that have borne the brunt of the catastrophic impact of unabated greenhouse gas emissions heating up the Earth’s surface.”
“More importantly, Manila’s selection as host of the LDF Board, which our President boldly offered in last year’s 28th session of the UN’s Conference of Parties or COP in Dubai, has propped up Marcos’s position as champion or spokesman for the most vulnerable economies long seeking climate justice, in the form of damage compensation from the world’s most affluent industrialized states that have become richer as the heaviest polluters of the environment,” Villafuerte said.
As President of the host-country Philippines, “Mr. Marcos will certainly have a more emphatic voice to push here and abroad for climate justice and for ample financing for economies most affected by the ravages of planet heating,” Villafuerte added.
Despite budgetary constraints, the Marcos government has been pursuing concrete steps on decarbonization, specifically on weaning the country away from the use of fossil fuel for energy generation in favor of renewables like solar and wind power.
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