Press Release
November 9, 2009

'Polluters must pay,' says Loren
To push at UN debt-for-climate adaptation swap

Senator Loren Legarda yesterday proposed a "novel" way to fund the country's climate change adaptation and reconstruction initiatives in view of the fact that half of the country's annual budget, pegged at P1.5 trillion for 2010, is allocated for foreign-debt servicing.

Loren said that the country's reconstruction efforts from the devastations wrought by typhoons Ondoy, Pepeng and Santi, as well as its implementation of the landmark 2009 Climate Change Act, are hobbled primarily by lack of funds.

"I am proposing for our creditors, including the World Bank and the United States, to consider a Debt for Climate Change Adaptation Swap, in which portions of our payments for our foreign debts will be used by us instead for reconstruction and climate adaptation measures," said Loren.

The chair of the Senate Oversight Committee on Climate Change, Loren revealed that she would formalize her proposal during the United Nations Conference on Climate Change Adaptation to be held in Copenhagen, Denmark from December 7 to 18.

Appointed by the UN as its Climate Change Mitigation and Disaster Risk-Reduction Champion for the Asia-Pacific Region, Loren will co-head the Philippine delegation to the Copenhagen conference.

She explained that under her proposal, the World Bank and the US, for example, may allow the Philippines to use US$1 billion (roughly P47 billion at the present exchange rate) for climate change related activities.

Among those that may be funded by the swap are the reforestation of three to eight million hectares each year, relocation of families displaced by the recent typhoons, and the refurbishing and/or the building of new schools, hospitals and mass settlements to higher standards, away from geographically hazardous areas.

Loren said international lending institutions and rich, highly developed nations like the US and Japan must also help poor and developing countries like the Philippines grapple with the effects of climate change. She explained that as the primary user of fossil fuel like oil and coal, rich nations have the lion's share in the release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, which is blamed for global warming.

"Under my Polluters Must Pay Principle, the international community of nations must press developed countries not only to lower their greenhouse gas emissions, but to contribute financially to a Climate Adaptation Fund," Loren said.

She said that poor countries affected by climate change such as the Maldives, whose coasts are being swamped; Bhutan, which is hounded by perennial flooding and earthquakes; and the Philippines, may tap into the fund.

She pressed immediate action by the Philippines for the 60,000 families living under a mountain of garbage in Lupang Arenda in Taytay, Rizal, the thousands of farmers from Laguna whose farmlands had been flooded and had become part of Laguna de Bay; and the many other Filipinos in Bulacan whose livestock and poultry had been washed away by the flood.

"Farmers in Laguna had been forced to become fisher folks as their lands had come under water. Such an irony manifests the gravity of our problem," Loren said.

During the Global Humanitarian Forum held last June in Geneva, Switzerland, Loren already presented her concepts on how poor nations can have access to climate adaptation funds, including those culled from the gross domestic products of rich nations.

She recalled the ideas being received enthusiastically by the forum, with UN Undersecretary for Humanitarian Affairs John Holmes describing them as "noble ideas."

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