Just bragging rights

There were so much sound and fury over the Philippines not joining the rest of the world in ratifying the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. It came to head as this international agreement intended to stave off the feared global warming came into force over the weekend.

Under the Paris Agreement, developed nations are asked to decarbonize their economies by setting limits to global warming to well below two degrees Celsius, and possibly not more than 1.5 degrees Celsius. Developed nations must raise $100 billion every year to help vulnerable nations like the Philippines in climate change mitigation and adaptation, and to transfer technology.

At this stage while the Philippines is on the verge of economic takeoff in a bid to join the ranks of industrialized nations, President Rodrigo Duterte vehemently argued against ratifying the Paris climate change pact that will impose reduction on carbon emissions by all countries that have ratified to join this. In his repeated public statements earlier, President Duterte cited there is no justification for the big industrialized countries to impose carbon emission limits upon the Philippines and other developing nations with their economies still growing.

United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has announced the Paris Agreement signed by world leaders last April entered into force on Nov. 4 with enough countries that signed the accord have already ratified this international treaty. To date, 96 countries, including the United States (US) and China, both heavy carbon emitters, have ratified it out of 197 signatory parties.

Although the Philippines was one of its signatory- countries, it has not validated its joining the Paris Agreement.

Under our country’s 1987 Constitution, the President must submit international treaties such as the Paris Agreement for Senate concurrence and ratification to make it enforceable also in the Philippines.

A few days before it took effect, no less than former president Fidel Ramos added his voice to prod the administration of President Duterte to reconsider its declared position against acceding to the Paris Agreement. In stinging rebuke, the former president took issue over President Duterte’s public avowals that he will not honor the Paris climate change agreement because he finds it “stupid and absurd.”

Mr. Ramos noted with concern the Paris Agreement appears to be lumped together along with President Duterte’s running feud with the European Union (EU), the US and the UN over human rights issue on alleged extra-judicial killings in the Philippines. He wrote in his regular Sunday column at The Manila Bulletin last Oct.30: “In his consistently frequent insulting diatribes against the US, EU and the UN, in which President Du30 also keeps complaining against the December, 2015 Paris Agreement on Climate Change (crafted by 195 nations, the Philippines included), he is unwittingly shooting himself in the mouth, and also all of us, 101.5 million Filipinos.”

From then on, President Duterte soft-pedaled in his public pronouncements from not ratifying to waiting first for inputs and recommendations from his Cabinet advisers led by Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) Secretary Regina Lopez.

It was, after all, the latest public rebuke he got from Mr. Ramos.

Mr. Ramos explained his support for the Paris Agreement: “Ratifying the Paris Agreement will allow the Philippines to participate in the global effort to address climate change and advance our interests of our country and our people, as one of the most vulnerable to climate change. It will also enable us to secure more investments towards our climate goals and gain access to the financial, technological, and capacity-building support to be provided to parties of the Agreement.”

On the other hand, not ratifying the Paris Agreement, Mr. Ramos warned, will force the Philippines to continue on its own without having to consider or report on our country’s contribution to the global response to climate change. He pointed out the Philippines spends an average of 0.5% of its yearly gross domestic product for “losses and damages” due to typhoons and other natural and man-made calamities disasters.

“So we are, in effect, already paying for the impacts of climate change to which we have contributed very little. (For perspective, the Philippines is responsible for only about 1/3 of 1% of yearly global emissions),” Mr. Ramos argued.

I could not make heads or tails on this particular argument of the former president. If this is the price of not ratifying it, this should all the more convince us there is no point in the haste by which the Philippines should ratify the Paris Agreement.

If our country does not ratify this, the only other argument Mr. Ramos raised was that the Philippine government delegation will only attend as “observers” to the “Conference of the Parties Serving as the Meeting of Parties to the Paris Agreement” which will be held today in Marrakech, Morocco. So what?

DENR Sec.Lopez is fully aware of President Duterte's sentiments on the matter before she flew to Morocco.

She should have instead just sent a token delegation rather than let us taxpayers foot the bill for the entire delegation on a junket to Morocco.

Methinks there is wisdom to carefully weigh and study first what would be the gains or benefits versus losses or disadvantages of the Paris Agreement for the Philippines. The trouble with us Filipinos is our propensity to be always the first to join this or that treaty or agreement. We have not learned from our lessons that haste makes waste.

Take the case of our having the first among countries to join the brave new world of seamless globalized trading. In 1995, then President Ramos convinced the Senate into ratifying our accession to the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariff and Trade and gave birth to the World Trade Organization (WTO).

Look at the state of Philippine agriculture 21 years later after we ratified the WTO under liberalized trade regime. We became a dumping ground for all imported goods, not to mention, a smuggling haven.

Without benefit of full understanding and appreciation of the implications of what we are getting into, our Filipino farmers bore the brunt of the seamless trading bandied about for the ratification of the WTO.

All we earned were just bragging rights as among the first countries to ratify it.