The Environment Report

MANILA, Philippines -- The Philippines will be supporting the call of the Group of 77 developing countries for rich nations to take responsibility for global warming and bankroll the implementation of climate change mitigation and adaptation measures around the world.

Secretary Heherson Alvarez, presidential adviser on global warming and climate change, has been tasked by President Macapagal-Arroyo to lead the delegation from the Philippines to the climate change summit in Copenhagen in December.

Sen. Loren Legarda will be attending the global meet, representing the Senate as chair of the climate change oversight committee and as the UN International Strategy for Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) regional leader for climate change adaptation and DRR in Asia Pacific.

“Developing nations must band together to secure technical and financial assistance from industrialized nations,” said Legarda, the author of the Climate Change Act of 2009.

Called the “15th Conference of Parties (COP-15): United Nations Climate Conference” slated from Dec. 7 to 18, the Copenhagen summit sets an ambitious goal of achieving a legally binding climate pact in the form of a treaty to drastically reduce carbon emissions and prevent global warming.

Immediately after signing the Climate Change Act on Oct. 23, the President ordered Alvarez to ask developed nations to reduce global carbon emissions under the Kyoto Protocol, the climate change treaty which expires in 2012.

The Kyoto Protocol set binding targets for 37 industrialized countries and the European Union to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by an average of five percent from 1990 levels over the five-year period from 2008 to 2012.

The Copenhagen conference will negotiate a new treaty, which world leaders will vote on at the meeting.

Legarda and Alvarez will be joined by Bernarditas Muller, the leading climate change negotiator for the country.

Based in Geneva, Muller has been negotiating for the draft accord being pushed by most of the developing nations in asking developed nations to make deeper cuts in carbon emissions as well as put up a fund for mitigation.

Legarda said she would push for a debt-for-climate change adaptation fund in Copenhagen to be used for rehabilitation and reconstruction of disaster victims, reforestation and implementation of environmental laws.

“Adaptation is more important to the Philippines than mitigation because we are not the major emitters of carbon,” she said.