By Robert B. Roque, Jr.
While many of us are still fully absorbed in the politics of suspense and posturing for the May 2022 elections, an all-important meeting of world leaders on our degenerating Earth is taking place in Glasgow, Scotland, from Oct. 31 to Nov. 13.
Drawing little appeal for the seven o’clock news, the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference, also known as “COP26,” is a global summit in which the Philippines has a big voice. Why so?
If there’s any place in the world that better represents the effects of climate change and pays the consequential price of centuries of greenhouse gas emissions, it must be a country like ours that hosts 22 storms in a year in between alternating La Nina and El Nino events; an archipelago smack in the middle of the region with the richest marine biodiversity; a nation where most people are poor and vulnerable to calamities; but one that matches, if not surpasses, the commitments to climate change mitigation of the wealthiest and most powerful nations on earth.
Yet, all Filipino eyes are on TikTok.
Of all people in the world, we understand most how it is to live with the impacts of climate change. So let me spell it out for you in simple and concrete terms. Check your broken umbrella at home, torn and rusted by scorching heat, twisted by strong wind and rain; the soles of your shoes, stained and powdering away from being drenched in flood and mud. And you’re among the lucky ones who see those signs of wreck in your replaceable things, not the school you go to or the house you live in.
COP26, which stands for “Conference of Parties” – meaning governments, is the concerted effort of humankind to save our planet and future generations of our people by agreeing to live within sustainable means and growth. This goal puts our “small” developing country of 110 million people in a position to question the mighty nations that squeeze the world of its resources to quench its thirst for luxury and domination.
But President Duterte, the father of our nation, is not setting foot at this summit even if it lasts 14 days. Too busy with stuffing sacks with money, I mean gifts, for elections, err… I meant Christmas, sir?
Well, in fairness to Mr. Duterte, he has never been a fan of the COP, having threatened to pull out of the 2015 Paris Agreement on lowering carbon emissions. He was probably right in seeing a great disparity in the sacrifice on economic growth the Philippines had to burden itself with, as opposed to the world’s richest and most pollutant economies.
Now, there’s quite some apprehension among conservationists since, for the first time, the Philippine delegation to the COP will be headed by the country’s top financial manager, Secretary Sonny Dominguez.
Some feel that more aggressive steps crucial to mitigating climate change may be farther from our team’s agenda; and that Dominguez would instead be fighting for a favorable business climate for our ailing economy.
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