Philippines committed to global climate goals — DENR

MANILA, Philippines — The Philippines remains committed in doing its part to address climate change, consistent with the international aim of keeping global temperatures to two degrees Celsius or less.

The Department of Environment and Natural Resources said the country’s nationally determined contributions (NDCs) are now being updated for submission to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) within the year.

“Our goal is to come up with more realistic and achievable NDCs, that’s why our targets are being re-calculated based on updated options for climate change adaptation and mitigation,” Environment Secretary Roy Cimatu said.

The updated options include “target setting and development of a transition plan for this year.”

DENR also plans to include in the NDCs a cap-and-trade program to control the industrial sector emissions and require the mining industry to neutralize its greenhouse gas emissions and associated deforestation.

The Paris Agreement aims to strengthen global response to the threat of climate change by keeping the  global temperature increase well below two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

It also requires all parties to put their best efforts forward through NDCs and to strengthen these efforts in the years ahead.

In October 2015, the Philippines submitted to the UNFCCC its INDCs with a commitment to reduce its greenhouse (GHG) emissions by about 70 percent by 2030 while maintaining a “business-as-usual scenario.”

The DENR has been tasked to do an inventory of the country’s GHG emissions and identify mitigating options for the forestry, industry and waste sectors. The Department of Energy and the Department of Transportation, meanwhile,  are in charge of monitoring GHG emissions of the energy and transport sectors while the Climate Change Commission is mandated to consolidate the reports on all sectors.

“We are targeting to submit the NDCs to the UNFCCC this year once the sectoral reports from the different government agencies have been consolidated, and after these reports are conferred with in series of stakeholder consultations,” Cimatu said.