To secure loss, damage funds for high-risk countries

CAMARINES Sur Rep. LRay Villafuerte is backing Manila’s lobby to use the quaintly overlapping six cyclones that pummeled the Philippines in less than a month as a “test case” to secure financing from the newly installed Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage (FrLD) that the wealthy—and heavily polluting—countries belonging to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) have put up for the climate mitigation and adaptation measures that high-risk economies like the Philippines must spend on to face the calamitous effects of planet heating.

The congressman from Camarines Sur, which was the worst hit by severe tropical storm Kristine, said, “President Marcos is spot on in wanting to use the unprecedented devastation wrought by six cyclones this October-November period alone as ‘baseline’ for what climate-vulnerable nations have been enduring—and will be enduring in the future—plus the immense resources they need to access right away for their recovery from the disasters and preparations for future calamities.”

Villafuerte, National Unity Party (NUP) president, said his previous view that the worse-than-expected impact of Kristine and the other cyclones that struck us in recent weeks should be “Exhibit A” in the ongoing COP29 and the December meeting of the FrLD Board in Manila, “jibes with our President’s position on using the disastrous effects of these typhoons on our country as a ‘test case’ for FrLD funding for developing economies that have been suffering the most from climate change even if they have contributed very little to greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution.”

In the past COP summits in Egypt and the UAE as well as in the ongoing one in Azerbaijan, Villafuerte has consistently pushed for much higher reparation from affluent country-polluters for highly vulnerable economies like the Philippines that have been suffering the most from the world’s rising temperatures and sea levels.

In Kristine’s aftermath, Villafuerte had proposed to Congress the inclusion of an initial P20-billion Bicol Rehabilitation and Recovery Fund (BRRF) in the proposed 2025 General Appropriations Act (GAA) for a multi-year effort to get the storm-devastated Bicol back on its feet at the soonest.

Villafuerte said the proposed P20-billion BRRF, if and when enacted into law, can finance the revival of the discontinued Bicol River Basin Development Program (BRBDP), which President Marcos himself directed the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) to “revisit” after the first of his two trips to CamSur to check on evacuees.

On Day 2 of the 29th UNFCCC or Conference of Parties (COP 29) in Baku, Azerbaijan, Secretary Antonio Yulo-Loyzaga of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) signed the Host Country Agreement (HCA) on the FrLD, which was established in the COP 27 in Sharm El-Sheikh in Egypt and then operationalized in the COP28 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Yulo-Loyzaga, the head of the Philippine delegation to COP29, signed with FrLD co-chairpersons Richard Sherman and Jean-Christophe Donnellierthe the HCA, which formalized Manila’s selection as the inaugural host of the FrLD, and which—according to a DENR statement—was “key to unlocking funds to support the loss and damage needs of particularly vulnerable countries.”

Selected by the FrLD Board as its first host country during its second meeting last July in Songdo, South Korea, the Philippines is hosting the fourth meeting of this Board on Dec. 2-5.

President Marcos signed Republic Act (RA) No. 12019 last August granting legal personality and capacity to the FrLD Board.

In her speech during the HCA signing event on the second day of the Nov. 11-22 COP29, Yulo-Loyzaga conveyed the message from President Marcos about the “deep devastation” the Philippines has been “suffering from the unrelenting impacts of these tropical cyclones and wishes for this unprecedented experience to serve, perhaps, as a baseline not only for what climate vulnerable developing countries are and will be in fact enduring in these uncertain and unpredictable times, but also of our capacity to recover given the adequate and timely access to resources.”

Loyzaga-Yulo said that for President Marcos, the Philippines “may be a test case for the Fund in responding to this unique cumulative loss of lives and damage to critical infrastructure such as hospitals, schools, roads, water and power systems. “

“The Philippines is experiencing a historically unprecedented series of extreme weather events. In the past three weeks, we have been struck by four successive tropical cyclones. A fifth has just made landfall, and a sixth is on the way,” she said during the HCA event presided by COP29 President Minister Mukhtar Babayev, and attended by officials of the UNFCCC and of the World Bank (as FrLD Trustee).

After Kristine, Leon, Marce and Nikka, the Philippines was hit by typhoons Ofel and Pepito in quick succession.

“For the Philippines, living with risk and loss and damage has been part of our history as an archipelago. We therefore have a deep and personal stake in ensuring that the Fund for responding to Loss and Damage succeeds,” Yulo-Loyzaga added.

Tropical cyclone wind signal (TCWS) No. 5 was up over Polillo Islands in Quezon and Calaguas Island in Camarines Norte on Sunday morning as super typhoon Pepito approached, with the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA) expecting winds with speed of 185 kilometers per hour (kph) or higher during the day.

Eight areas, including the northernmost portion of CamSur, were under TCWS No. 4, while over 20 other areas, including the northern parts of CamSur, were under TCWS No. 3.

According to reports, almost a half million people had been evacuated in Bicol alone before Pepito, the sixth storm to hit the country in three weeks, made landfall over the weekend.

Under the Paris Agreement of 2015, wealthy countries agreed to give a combined $100 billion in annual aid to developing states over the 2020-2024 period.

Annual contributions reached $100 billion only in 2022.

Donor-states need to come up with a New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG) on climate finance at the end of COP29 as UNFCCC members need to replace the $100-billion amount by 2025.

The National Aeronautics Space Administration (NASA) said the spate of storms that hit the Philippines in the past few weeks was “unusual,” in citing a satellite image showing that cyclones Marce, Nikka, Ofel and Pepito lined up the western Pacific last Oct. 11 after approaching or passing Luzon.

“In an unusual sight, four storms churned simultaneously in the Western Pacific Ocean in November 2024,” NASA said. “The Japan Meteorological Agency reported that it was the first time since records began in 1951 that so many storms co-existed in the Pacific basin in November.”

This NCQG refers to the climate financing target for contributions from wealthy nations for helping less affluent and more vulnerable economies like the Philippines transition to renewables or clean energy, carry out initiatives for them to cope with the impact of planet heating such as worsening storms and rising sea levels, and to compensate them—through the FRLD—for the damages wrought upon them by carbon pollution.

“Our country has the moral high ground to lobby for higher financial reparation in the COP29 and the FRLD Board meeting in December because the far-worse-than-expected devastation wrought, for instance, by Kristine on Bicol is Exhibit A to illustrate that the effects of global warming on high-risk countries like the Philippines, resulting from the GHG pollution by affluent economies, are becoming nastier by the day—and thus behooves these heavy polluters to cough up more money for climate finance,” Villafuerte said.

The Group of 20 (G20) countries accounts for almost 80% of all GHG emissions.

In contrast, the Philippines—even if it accounts for just 0.3% of global GHG emissions—has become a big casualty of the climate crisis, having been battered by highly destructive natural disasters like typhoons Yolanda, Ondoy and Kristine.

Villafuerte said there is pressure from certain sectors for the FRLD to go up to hundreds of billions of dollars per year, believing that such a far higher amount is what high-risk economies actually need to make them more climate-resilient, so they could avoid the worst effects of global warming.

CamSur was Kristine’s hardest hit province, where many of its communities experienced above-head or even roof-level floods for the first time ever as this typhoon dumped two months’ worth of rainfall in just one day last October.

Kristine brought with it 711 milliliters (ML) of rainfall over a three-day period last month in Bicol—or a third more than the previous record of 455 ML unleashed by typhoon Ondoy in 2009—flooding 759 of CamSur’s over 1,000 barangays and inundating 488 of these villages, of which 216 were totally submerged in floodwaters.

The Philippines, which is located in the Pacific Ring of Fire and the Pacific Typhoon Belt, is one of the 68 members of the Climate Vulnerable Forum (CVF), which is the global partnership of countries that, according to the CVF, is “disproportionately affected” by the consequences of climate change.

In the latest World Risk Index report released in September, the Philippines remained at No. 1 on the list of most disaster-prone countries, in the face of extreme natural calamities like typhoons, earthquakes and drought.

Published by the Germany-based Bündnis Entwicklung Hilft and the Institute for International Law of Peace and Armed Conflict at Ruhr University Bochum (IFHV), the World Risk Report gave the Philippines the highest score of 46.91 among 193 countries—based on exposure to disasters and vulnerability to the effects of these calamities.

AUTHOR PROFILE

Ryan Ponce Pacpaco