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Year: 2021

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Private sector urged to align operations with PH draft climate plan

Private sector urged to align operations with PH draft climate plan

March 7, 2021

Quezon City — Private corporations, conglomerates, and small and medium enterprises in the country must align their thrusts, operations, and investment portfolios with the country’s Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) under the Paris Agreement, which is now submitted to the Office of the President.

 

This was highlighted by Climate Reality Leaders Rex Barrer, Climate Governance Head of the Institute for Climate and Sustainable Cities, and Sara Ahmed, Finance Advisor to the Vulnerable Group of Twenty Ministers of Finance of the Climate Vulnerable Forum, during yesterday’s virtual forum entitled Climate Targets of the Philippines: A Town Hall Discussion for Corporate Stakeholders on the Philippines’ Nationally Determined Contribution.

The forum was organized by the Sustainarumble Podcast in collaboration with the Society of Sustainability Practicioners with support from The Climate Reality Project Philippines and the Institute for Climate and Sustainable Cities.

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“The NDC is being touted by the government as the national industrialization strategy. It would therefore require consideration on how the private sector could actually contribute to that in the long run,”
REX BARRER, INSTITUTE FOR CLIMATE AND SUSTAINABLE CITIES

The Department of Finance and the Climate Change Commission presented last month the draft NDC to stakeholders, which enshrines the country’s commitment to a projected greenhouse gas emissions reduction and avoidance of 75 percent below 2010 levels by 2030.

“The NDC is being touted by the government as the national industrialization strategy. It would therefore require consideration on how the private sector could actually contribute to that in the long run,” Barrer said as he emphasized the need for the private sector to be involved in the NDC process.

Ahmed said that the NDC presents an investment opportunity for the private business sector. “The whole point of the NDC and all these discussions on climate action and climate ambition is really to promote an alternative economic and financial vision,” she said.

Citing the guidelines for sustainable finance framework issued by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, Ahmed noted that domestic banks are beginning to integrate into its operations safeguards from evolving material hazards of physical climate risk and transition, including stranded assets.

Ahmed also explained that accessing international capital would require SMEs and corporations to transition their portfolios. “More than 100 globally significant banks have coal exit strategies. Most recently, industries are also leaving the oil and gas sectors,” she noted as she explains that investors are now valuing the shift to climate-resilience and low-carbon opportunities.

There are conglomerates in the Philippines—Ayala being the largest one—that are already pursuing the shift to more sustainable investments, Ahmed said. “There is a benefit to shifting early. You get first dibs to new investors and you get more capital to invest in projects that will have higher deals over in the long run than future stranded assets,” she added.

climate finance, ndc

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#RealiTalk Blog Feature

#RealiTalk: National Arts Month with Padma Perez

#RealiTalk: National Arts Month with Padma Perez

February 11, 2021

Artist Fara Manuel-Nolasco's son inspects her linocut work for the Agam Agenda icon. Photo by Fara Manuel-Nolasco.
Gawani Domogo Gaongen in the collaborative video poem Midnight. Climate. Survival. Harvest Moon carries a poem in Kankanaey by Gawani
Maria Faciolince in the collaborative video poem Midnight. Climate. Survival. Maria contributed two photographs in Harvest Moon.
A page from Agam: Filipino Narratives on Uncertainty and Climate Change, showing Sampulong Garumoy by Merlinda Bobis and the photo prompt by Jose Enrique Santos.
Latin America Editor Alexandra Walter sifts through the photo prompts for the forthcoming Agam onthology entitled Harvest Moon: Poems and Stories from the Edge of the Climate Crisis. Photo by Padma Perez.
Ground Bravo Studios, where Agam the Climate Podcast was recording prior to the pandemic. Photo by AC Dimatatac.
Padma Perez and Criselda Yabes recording Episode 5 of Agam the Climate Podcast, pre-COVID-19. Photo by AC Dimatatac.

February is the National Arts Month, an annual celebration mandated by Presidential Proclamation No. 683 (s. 1991) that aims to promote Filipino artistry and harness the arts as a catalyst for nation-building. 

 

To join this national observance and for this month’s #RealiTalk feature, we talked to Filipino Climate Reality Leader, poet, and writer Padmapani “Padma” Perez on the critical role of artists in the growing transdisciplinary effort to advance climate action.

Getting people to grasp the enormity of the climate crisis has proved a challenge for scientists. How can artists contribute to the growing interdisciplinary collaboration on advancing climate action, especially in the time of pandemic?

 

Padma: When people all over the world went into lockdown in early 2020, tweets and memes erupted on the internet reminding everyone (or at least everyone on social media) that it was the work of artists keeping us sane and giving us comfort during the pandemic. The music we danced or sang or cried to, the books we read, the movies we loved and talked about, the photographs that showed us we weren’t alone in this—each of these is a result of someone’s creative labor. The meme made clear that art is part of everyone’s lives.

Artists have the ability to draw our attention to things that matter through words, music, dance, theater, paintings, photographs, sculpture, installations, and more. They have the ability to take something we think we know and turn it on its head so that we are surprised or provoked by their creations. Artists can make us feel seen, recognized, and valued. They have the power to move people, to move our feelings and our thoughts. This is nothing short of magical.

 It’s this ability to focus people’s attention, draw people in, and touch the wellspring of emotion that artists can bring to climate action. Pandemic or not, artists can make powerful works of art that will matter to someone, move across borders, and inspire people to get involved and take action.

What art forms are the most effective tools to help change people’s mindsets and shift culture toward sustainability? How can the government, academe, and private business sector harness these art forms to advance their climate advocacies? 

 

Padma: I want to flip the question around and ask, what are the tools that government, academe, and businesses can provide for artists to do the work of shifting perspectives and making change from the ground up? What do they have to offer that artists can harness to advance climate advocacies? Can the government open up entry points for creative engagement? As the Poet Luisa Igloria says, “We need to visualize change before we can act on it.”

More than providing establishments with a set of tools, art is itself a way to engage with and reimagine government, academe, and the private business sector. Art’s role in climate advocacy goes beyond being a tool for the creative communication of science and policy. Through making and rearranging things or playing with materials, artists give us other ways to experience and revivify our relationships with one another, with our environments, and other species. Art can also make it possible for people of different backgrounds, ages, and cultures to support one another in a shared cause, even across distance and without meeting face to face. 

Apart from giving us discovery, delight, and new perspectives, art can also challenge, perplex, and rattle us. Art cannot be merely entertaining, decorative, or pretty. Maybe this is what we need to snap us out of complacency and business as usual. Science has already established that business as usual is unsustainable, but real systemic change is moving too slowly. So perhaps we need to be disturbed. And where a superstorm might jolt us out of our false comforts with destruction, art can stir us into action through creation. This is where artists and poets come in.

While the pandemic continues to limit our movement, there are still so many possibilities for engagement between artists, scientists, organizations, academe, governments, businesses, and most importantly, local communities and individuals stuck at home: radio (or podcast) dramas, photostories, flip top, spoken word, public art, illustration, comics, zines, animation and other exciting things that creative people can surely dream up together.

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"It’s this ability to focus people’s attention, draw people in, and touch the wellspring of emotion that artists can bring to climate action."
PADMA PEREZ

What are the opportunities and difficulties you’ve encountered bringing together writers, artists, activists, educators, to co-create and collaborate for climate action?

 

Padma: Creative collaboration is easy to say, but harder to do. At the Agam Agenda, part of our work is to open up spaces for transdisciplinary collaboration between the sciences, arts, and humanities. To do this, we ourselves have to unlearn habits of mind around territoriality (in areas of work), ownership (of concepts and processes), and competition (for resources and audiences). We ask people to come out of their comfort zones and work in contexts and with people that they might not otherwise encounter or even consider reaching out to. This is not a small thing to ask because we’re all up against old structures and boundaries. 

For example, in academe, scientists and scholars are expected to maintain disciplinary boundaries. We’re all still learning how to be interdisciplinary and there are a lot of walls that need to be broken down in the process. Going back to the question on art and tools, maybe art is the sledgehammer that will break these walls down and then bring forth a new architecture for collaborative and mutualistic futures?

Another challenge we face is how the climate change conversation is dominated by colonial paradigms of “development” and sustainability. We can see how this is so detrimental in excluding or not paying enough attention to the experiences of those most vulnerable to climate-related impacts, resulting directly in un/conscious biases, lack of access, injustices in reform or solutions, etc. Often, the places in which climate change is a matter of life and death become invisible. This is partly why the Agam Agenda’s forthcoming book, Harvest Moon: Poems and Stories from the Edge of the Climate Crisis, sought to bring together poems, stories, and lyrical essays from Africa, Asia, the Pacific, and Latin America, written by poets, journalists, scientists, and novelists who bear witness to climate change.

Following the success of the book Agam: Filipino Narratives on Uncertainty and Climate Change, the Agam Agenda is now developing a new international literary anthology on climate change. Can you tell us what to expect from this new book?

 

Padma: Harvest Moon (out later in 2021) is an anthology of 30 climate narratives (poetry, fiction, and essays) written in nine world languages, prompted by 30 black and white photographs, from 24 countries. Most of the pieces are written in English or Spanish but the book also includes poems and stories originally written in Zapoteca, Kankanaey, Swahili, Bahasa Indonesia, Turkish, French, and Chinese. These are all translated into English.

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"Art's role in climate advocacy goes beyond being a tool for the creative communication of science and policy."
PADMA PEREZ

Our contributors include Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner, Yuvan Aves, Leonardo Padura, Irma Pineda, Fiston Mwanza Mujila, and Malebo Sephodi. (Try googling them! They’re incredible!) So readers can expect to find a diversity of world views, imagery, and possible futures in the pages of the book.

 

We speak to many of the contributors of both Agam: Filipino Narratives and Harvest Moon on Agam the Climate Podcast, which we produce in collaboration with Ground Bravo studios. You can follow the podcast on Spotify. In the podcast, we talk about the piece they contributed to the book, their work, and their reflections on the roles of artists in facing the climate crisis. While we get ready to launch Harvest Moon, we are busily spreading our spores, chasing wild ideas, and organizing sessions that bring into conversation scientists, writers, artists, activists, and educators for climate action. Abangan!

 
artivism

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Press Releases

TCRP PH vows support for the strengthening of PH climate finance tracking system

TCRP PH vows support for the strengthening of PH climate finance tracking system

February 10, 2021

Manila — The Climate Reality Project (TCRP) Philippines said it will support initiatives to establish and institutionalize a national monitoring system for climate finance in the country.

 

“We are ready to provide technical support to the government in developing a system for cross-checking the reports of donor countries and institutions to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development,” Nazrin Castro, TCRP PH Branch Manager, said following the Roundtable Discussion on Climate Adaptation Finance Tracking organized by climate policy think tank  Institute of Climate and Sustainable Cities (ICSC).

The roundtable discussion focused on the findings of the study Climate Finance Adaptation Study Report: Philippines, which is part of an international pilot project to evaluate the accuracy and reliability of multilateral and bilateral donors’ reporting of climate finance.

According to the report, the Philippines received $4.3 billion worth of climate financing between 2013 and 2017. However, 37% of the $2.1 billion allocated for adaptation, or USD 770 million, could be considered as “over-reported” funds or funds that could not be considered as genuine adaptation finance.

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“Establishing a credible climate finance tracking system will make it easier for the government to assess and determine the gaps in adaptation and mitigation financing in the country,”
NAZRIN CASTRO, THE CLIMATE REALITY PROJECT PHILIPPINES

During the forum, ICSC Deputy Executive Director Kairos Dela Cruz said that they plan to further strengthen the report in the coming months.

Castro explained that the initial findings of the report are critical not just in extracting accountability from all actors involved in the mobilization of climate finance, but also in ensuring that climate funds are being utilized according to the needs of the recipient countries.

“Establishing a credible climate finance tracking system will make it easier for the government to assess and determine the gaps in adaptation and mitigation financing in the country,” Castro said. “It will also enable us to develop a country-driven climate finance plan for the country’s Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) and the National Adaptation Plan,” she added.

The draft Philippine NDC commits a 75% greenhouse gas reduction and avoidance by 2030 from 2010 levels. Of this mitigation target, 72.67% will depend heavily on the transfer of climate finance and leading-edge technologies from developed countries.

In line with this, Castro said the Philippines could use the initial findings of the report as leverage in negotiating for the enhancement of the global climate finance mobilization process in the upcoming 26th Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

“Aside from developing our own climate finance plan and monitoring system, we should also push for the development of a climate finance accounting system under the Paris Agreement. This system should not just promote transparency, but also enable congruent matching between the mitigation needs of developing countries and the means of implementation support made by developed countries,” Castro explained.

This proposed global accounting system, Castro said, will be critical in ensuring the delivery of finance, capacity building, and technology transfer support for the achievement of our NDC targets and meeting the adaptation needs of communities in the context of climate justice.

climate finance

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#RealiTalk Blog Feature

#RealiTalk: Zero Waste Month with Abby Ng

2021

January 17, 2021

Abby as a speaker at the ASEAN University Network and Association of Southeast Asian Nations+3 event held in Chiang Mai University in Thailand in June 2019.
Abby, project head for ALAB 2020, a fashion show on plastic pollution and its effects on lower income communities.
Abby as a speaker at the ASEAN University Network and Association of Southeast Asian Nations+3 event held in Chiang Mai University in Thailand in June 2019.
Abby together with the Ateneo Environmental Science Society Central Board 2019-2020 at the Pawikan Conservation Center.

In observance of the Zero Waste Month this January, we talked to Climate Reality Leader Abigail “Abby” Ng for a #RealiTalk feature on the country’s problem of waste and how we can initiate our own efforts towards a zero or minimal waste lifestyle.

 

Abby is a Program Associate at Villgro Philippines and a freelance artist. She is also the external relations officer of Bye Bye Plastic Bags PH, a youth-led environmental conservation organization.

What are your or your organization’s initiatives to promote zero waste? What is 

your role in this initiative? What has been your experience thus far?

 

Abby: I think we should change the term zero-waste to “minimal waste” because there will be waste produced no matter how eco-friendly we want to be. I’m part of the “Bye Bye Plastic Bags Philippines” team, and one of the ways we do this is to relate the issue back to the people. What we do to the environment, we do to our people. When we protect the environment, we protect ourselves and the generations to come. And when we don’t, we risk the lives of those who will come after us.

A year ago, we held our first plastic fashion show, but we made sure to do this in a way that was real and meaningful, rather than something glamorous that could keep us away from the real issues we wanted to address. We partnered with a local community and talked about the very real consequences they suffer from being exposed to pollution.

It was a life changing moment for me because only when we planned that event that I realized how closely connected people were to the Earth and how differently plastic pollution affect low-income families. Our goal was never to force people to completely change their lifestyle into a “zero-waste” one, but to raise awareness on the amount of waste we generate can harm others and to show them that we can address this issue together.

 

How do you conduct these initiatives? Do you coordinate with volunteers, local authorities, and community residents?

 

Abby: We have a pool of volunteers, a network of environmental leaders, and partner communities. We try our best to give our volunteers avenues to be as involved as possible, so we can also build their own skills as leaders. For our partners, we have grown close to quite a few and aim for more long-term partnerships to continuously build on our initiatives. We are working towards the same goals, so we also want to leverage on each other’s networks to reach more people. Partnerships are so important since a lot of us are members of small local organizations. Working together gives us a bigger platform where we can deepen connections.

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"I think one of the most effective ways to encourage minimal waste is to make sure alternatives are affordable and accessible because people choose the more convenient option."
ABBY NG

How would you encourage households, schools, businesses, and workplaces to promote zero waste? How should an individual start with zero-waste initiatives and lifestyle?

 

Abby: I think one of the most effective ways to encourage minimal waste is to make sure alternatives are affordable and accessible because people choose the more convenient option. We also have to show how it benefits them because not everyone has a natural inclination to being an environmental advocate. 

When it comes to individual action, I think it would be best to start with something you’re comfortable with. If switching to shampoo bars is easiest for you, then start with that and slowly make more changes as you go. If you have your own reusable jug, you don’t have to buy a new and expensive one just for the sake of it. It’s important to remember that less is more! Use what you already have, and it will help you become more grateful and content.

Can the Philippines achieve a zero-waste economy? What is your or your organization’s vision for a waste-free Philippines?

 

Abby: Our goal as an organization is to help people understand that while conscious consumerism allows us to take better care of our environment, the needed change will only happen when big corporations along with our government take action. The waste we produce is also strongly tied to poverty and how majority of Filipinos cannot afford or sustain a “sustainable” lifestyle.

I know that as difficult as it is, our country can minimize waste production, but only when those in power actually work with us can make it happen. We have well-written laws, but the implementation is deeply flawed, so that’s something we will have to keep pushing to improve. We may not see those changes manifest in our lifetime, but at the end of the day, it’s not just about us and our personal comfort but our children and grandchildren who will have to bear the brunt of our shortcomings.

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"One advice I can give is to fall in love with learning and find one thing about the environment that deeply resonates with you, then the rest will follow."
ABBY NG

Are there any other personal insights and experiences you would like to share with us?

 

Abby: There are a lot of conflicting opinions regarding individual action and collective action, and I think too many of those just talk about doing one or the other. There should always be a balance, and the ways we can protect our planet shouldn’t be dividing us. Make your lifestyle something that you can personally sustain, but also join the movement. Help us mobilize more advocates, and demand accountability from those in power. No action is too small, and no one is too young to take part.

The most important thing I learned along the way is to always find the connection. Everything is connected to our environment. There are social and racial injustices, as well as political issues, that contribute to everything we are experiencing now. We have to understand those connections in order to make effective solutions. One advice I can give is to fall in love with learning and find one thing about the environment that deeply resonates with you, then the rest will follow.

ecological and environmental stability, waste

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