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RP BACKS 50% CUT IN GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS BY 2050
Reinir Padua
The Philippine Star
December 12, 2007
The Philippine Delegation to the United Nations Framework Conference on Climate Change in Bali, Indonesia said they will support a 50-percent cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
According to the Advisory Council on Climate Change Mitigation, Adaptation and Communication, it will also seek the support of other small-island nations in the Asia-Pacific region to unite as one voice in the Dec. 3 to 14 Bali negotiations.
ACCCMAC chair and Environment Secretary Lito Atienza and co-chair former senator Heherson Alvarez said that the Philippine stand is in support of UNFCCC President Rachmat Witoelar’s call for a 50-percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by developed countries.
“Small-island nations are most vulnerable to global warming but they do not have the capacity and funding to put in place mitigation measures,” the two leaders said in a joint statement.
“We must call on industrialized nations to take a leadership role in Bali, to ensure that the world’s top 26 developed countries would welcome the 50-percent cut as a giant leap way beyond their five-percent reduction commitments in the 1998 Kyoto Protocol,” they said.
Leaders from 180 nations are meeting in Indonesia to chart a roadmap to mitigate the impacts of global warming that could put close to a billion people at risk.
The main negotiations will center on cutting emissions of industrialized nations by 25 percent to 40 percent by 2020 and 50 percent by 2050, a level that countries like the United States are poised to turn down.
According to Alvarez, who headed the Philippine delegation to Kyoto in 1997, the Philippines is particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change, with an impending temperature increase of two degrees centigrade by 2070, if carbon dioxide emissions will not be controlled.
“The five-percent average reduction in Kyoto was only the starting point. Now, world leaders have less than 10 years to put measures in place, otherwise environmental disasters will be irreversible, affecting health, education and poverty, particularly among the world’s poorest,” he said.
While industrialized nations cause 70 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, small nations and developing countries like the Philippines are poised to bear the brunt of suffering from extreme weather conditions caused by global warming.
“Half of our country’s 1,610 municipalities are near the coastline. A one meter increase in sea level could put 64 of our 81 provinces, or 80 percent, in harm’s way by submerging 700 million square meters of our total land area in water,” Alvarez said.
“On our return from Bali, we will implement the ACCCMAC’s programs for adaptation to extreme weather events, mitigations like renewable energy technology transfer, and communication to local governments and businesses to be our active partners in our last chance to save Mother Earth,” Atienza said.
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