Carlos G. Dominguez
Secretary of Finance
Fellow Ministers and distinguished guests: Good morning.
Thank you for inviting me to speak before you in this most vital forum.
Even as we continue the effort to contain the pandemic, we need to immediately move to concrete steps to save the planet. The ASEAN region, most vulnerable to the adverse consequences of global warming, must vigorously escalate its mitigation and adaptation efforts.
The Philippines is determined to play a leading role in the global effort to address climate change. Our country is sinking at a rate four times faster than the global average. Each year, we are confronted with increasingly more severe typhoons, floods, and droughts. We want to set a clear example of how a vulnerable country like ours can move ahead with its climate ambition.
To show to the world how we are acting with urgency, we committed one of the most ambitious Nationally Determined Contributions put forward by any country. Although the Philippines contributes only three-tenths of one percent to the total global greenhouse gas emissions, we committed to reducing that by 75 percent in 2030.
During the COP26 meeting, the Philippines has shifted global discussions on climate change from focusing on general scientific findings to undertaking practical actions that may immediately be undertaken on the ground. These measures necessarily involve financing and proper governance for funding flows.
In the COP26, the Philippines placed a spotlight on the true concept of climate finance, which the COP has continuously failed to take into account for over two decades now. We emphasized that climate finance should be a mix of grants for capacity building; investments for green projects; and subsidies that should address the financial costs and risks of communities transitioning to a climate-resilient economy. As these funds are ultimately from taxpayers, accountability and transparency are paramount to ensure the prudent use of such aid.
We specifically broached a proposal to the World Bank, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, and the Asian Development Bank to help catalyze financial flows to developing countries in order to meet our climate change objectives. Trust is a very important commodity in finance. The multilateral institutions are highly capable of creating processes that enhance trust, enforce transparency, and encourage prudence.
Given their extensive monitoring and well-established vetting processes, the multilateral banks are in the best position to provide seals of good housekeeping to help spur private investments in green projects. We urged the three institutions to collaborate more closely and build processes that will ensure harmonized guidelines to determine the viability and sustainability of these projects.
Under our proposal, these institutions could set the standards for transparency and accountability for green projects across the region. They must likewise work together with other institutions around the world in ensuring that such standards and guidelines are adopted.
With this reinvention of the current standards, the multilateral banks can play a pivotal role in mobilizing the trillions of dollars in private sector financing available for climate adaptation and mitigation projects.
The Philippine delegation to COP26 was insistent that those who have emitted and continue to emit the most greenhouse gases must bear the largest financial burden in our transition to carbon neutrality. This is the essence of climate justice that the most vulnerable countries have long been fighting for. The Philippines, however, will not wait for the Western countries to get their act together. We are moving ahead with the implementation of actual projects on the ground to enable us to meet our commitments.
The Philippines is ahead in our use of climate finance. Since 2019, Philippine companies have issued 4.8 billion US dollars worth of ASEAN-labelled GSS or Green, Social, and Sustainability bonds. This is equivalent to 29 percent of the current total ASEAN-labelled GSS Bond issuances, the highest in the ASEAN region.
The Philippines recently launched a Sustainable Finance Roadmap to provide a framework that will create a synergy between public and private investments in greening the financial system. The three elements of grants, investments, and subsidies need fine orchestration to push sustainability projects as quickly as possible. We are also in the process of completing our sustainable finance framework for the issuance of our first-ever sovereign green bonds.
The Asian Development Bank, Indonesia, and the Philippines launched a partnership for the Energy Transition Mechanism that will hasten the retirement of coal plants in the country and the shift to clean and renewable energy sources. This project is intended to boost the growth of renewable energy using an equitable, scalable, and market-based approach. In the coming period, we will conduct a full feasibility study focusing on the optimal business model for the Philippines.
The project will bring together financial resources from multilateral banks, private institutional investors, philanthropic contributions, and long-term investors to trigger our decisive shift towards de-carbonization. This is a model of cooperation that may be replicated elsewhere in the world where multilateral finance institutions, governments, and the private sector are aligned in their climate resiliency goals.
Meanwhile, we have strengthened our Climate Change Commission and put a group of national technical experts who represent all corners of the Philippines. They will engage fishers and farmers in the local communities to prepare them to adapt and mitigate the impacts of global warming.
We are most open to sharing expertise, best practices, and technologies with the rest of the region. We hope our initiatives could be replicated and scaled by other countries.
The Philippines will do all these with a great sense of urgency. We see global warming as an existential threat to our archipelago. We will respond to the challenge with everything we have.
Thank you.
@@@