CAMARINES SUR Representative LRay Villafuerte has welcomed the commitment of President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr.’s economic team to put its “green” agenda at the forefront of the administration’s top priorities, saying the new government could take ardent steps in tapping a new credit line offered by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) with an initial amount of $45 billion for low and middle-income economies like the Philippines to better deal with the worsening global climate crisis.

Villafuerte said Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) Secretary-designate Maria Antonia Yulo-Loyzaga could take the lead in pushing climate action and disaster resilience on top of the Marcos Cabinet’s concerns, “considering that this is right up her alley as a long-time advocate of climate adaptation and disaster risk management in civil society.”

The Camarines Sur legislator issued this statement following Yulo-Loyzaga’s oath-taking before the President as secretary of DENR, even as Department of Finance (DOF) Secretary Benjamin Diokno announced that climate change mitigation and adaptation would top the Marcos presidency’s priorities alongside economic growth.

A former technical adviser of the Philippine Disaster Resilience Foundation (PDRF), Yulo-Loyzaga stressed during the turnover ceremony at the DENR the need “to combat the climate emergency through practical climate change adaptation measures, the use of science to approach national scale as well as local scale impacts of climate change.”

Villafuerte said the DENR secretary should play a lead role in the Marcos government’s apparent commitment to strike a balance between pushing sustainable development and disaster mitigation, on the one hand, and pursuing high and inclusive growth in the post-pandemic era, on the other.”

Speaking before G20 finance ministers and central bank governors, Diokno said the Philippines is determined to be a world leader in the fight against climate-related disasters and has set an ambitious goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 75% in 2030 despite contributing only 0.3 percent to global emissions.

Diokno further said the government aims to cut energy costs by developing clean and renewable energy (RE) sources and will “work together” with the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and other institutions in the international community in “quicken(ing) our transition from coal to clean energy.”

Villafuerte said the IMF’s Resilience and Sustainability Trust (RST), which was approved last April by the IMF Executive Board and which took effect the following month, presents our economic managers and the DENR secretary with the available assistance it needs in pursuing a “green” agenda, given that this new facility, which will have an initial amount of $45 billion, is meant to help developing economies cope with protracted challenges like pandemics and climate change.

According to an IMF statement, its Executive Board approved the RST last April 13 to “complement the IMF’s existing lending toolkit by focusing on longer-term structural challenges—including climate change and pandemic preparedness—that entail significant macroeconomic risks and where policy solutions have a strong global public good nature.”

The IMF said it will channel Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) contributed by countries with strong external positions to countries where the needs are the greatest, providing policy support and affordable longer-term financing to strengthen members’ resilience and sustainability and thereby contributing to the prospective balance of payments stability … (It) will be a loan-based trust, with resources mobilized on a voluntary basis. About three-quarters of the IMF’s membership will be eligible for longer-term affordable financing from the RST, including all low-income countries, all developing and vulnerable small states, and lower middle-income countries.”

The Philippines belong to the Vulnerable 20 (V20) group of countries threatened by the highest risks from climate change.

Villafuerte recalled that the Philippine delegation expressed its “disappointment” during last year’s United Nations (UN) Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, Scotland, over the failure of wealthy economies to fulfill their pledge of providing at least $100 billion combined in climate financing to the Philippines and other highly vulnerable countries.

He commended the then-Duterte administration for committing to start implementing climate change adaptation and mitigation projects on the ground despite the delayed financing commitment of affluent countries.

“The IMF’s Resilience and Sustainability Trust could provide the financing that [vulnerable climate] countries like the Philippines badly need to meet the enormous resources necessary for them to fulfill their climate change commitments effectively,” Villafuerte said.

Villafuerte cited Camarines Sur as among the country’s climate-vulnerable provinces, which was why he had requested additional funding from the previous government to replace or repair facilities heavily damaged by supertyphoons that struck the Bicol region in 2018.

The IMF said the goal of the RST is to redistribute funds from wealthier countries to more vulnerable ones as members look to support global economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Around three-quarters of the IMF’s 190 members will be eligible to borrow from the new tool.

The RST will be a loan-based trust, with resources mobilized on a voluntary basis.

The loans will have a 20-year maturity and a ten and half year grace period, with borrowers paying an interest rate with a modest margin over the three-month SDR rate, with the most concessional financing terms provided to the poorest countries.